If I Could Turn Back The Hands of Time
by LadyCara
Summary: After JE Rose questions her life in the other universe when an unfamiliar person steps out of a not so familiar Police Public Call Box. When Earth is threatened, Rose and Romana team up to rescue it. Is a reunion possible? Step in to find out...
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This was written in response to one of Jessa L'Rynn's September Challenges, just a little bit that popped up in my head. I'm not entirely sure that the story isn't complete rubbish and might leave it at this point.

I don't own Doctor Who. I only own a potted plant (and mine is not called Ursula - okay, maybe it is, I never asked).

* * *

Rose Tyler determinedly closed the last oft he boxes which contained the interior of her office at Torchwood and left her key card on the now clean desk. Without a last look at the stunning view over London she picked up one of the boxes and her favorite potted plant, a half sentient being from a planet with an absolutely unpronounceable name, nicknamed Fred (the planet not the plant, her name was Ursula, of all things), walked towards the door and left the building for the last time.

She stepped on the street, walking slowly towards her flat. She was forty now and had spent literally half of her life saving the universe, the multi-verse or at least Earth from one or another alien invasion. Not that the universe had thanked her for that. Separated from her first true love, thrown in another universe and when she finally had found a way home, sent back again with his clone. What had he thought? She was Rose Tyler, the Bad Wolf, who had turned a whole fleet of Daleks into dust and now he thought she would be content with settling down with his clone? The three, well four, big C's: Clone, Children, Cooking, Church (not that she was religious, but she actually _had_ met the devil and lived to tell the tale). And the first incarnation she had met had called _her_ 'Stupid Ape!' Although at first she had tried to make it work because his clone had said what he obviously could not or would not admit. But it soon became apparent to her that she had changed too much since she first fell through the void. The first incarnation had loved to be challenged by her, his second hated it. This counted even more for his clone as he was born in war. Some days they had spent together were beautiful memories, on others they fought but mostly they didn't even speak to each other, let alone talk. Finally they separated and the last she had heard about him was that he had moved to France and lived with an actress called Sophia Arthur. Well, maybe she could keep him happy.

On the other hand she had to admit that it was her fault she was stuck in this universe as she had kissed his clone like the stupid girl he obviously thought she was. If only she could go back to that day on Darlig Ulf Stranden. Although what she really wanted was to go back to Satellite Five and stop him from changing if she was honest to herself. Her best friend, her true love with the thick Northern accent, piercing blue eyes and those adorable ears…

'Stop it!' she told herself firmly. You are forty years old and sound like a lovesick teenager. On the other hand that was exactly the problem. She was forty and still looked not more than twenty-three at the most. A few years ago she had stopped dying her hair which made her look older and had increased the effect by using make up differently. At the moment no one was suspecting anything as there was no one left who knew her when she first came in this universe. Her mum, Pete and her brother Tony had died seven years ago in a car accident, leaving her alone. Mickey had stayed in the old universe and Jake, well, Jake had been killed on a Torchwood mission while he tried to save her. Yet another death on her conscience. Anyway, she had to leave Torchwood or she would end up as a lab rat, a destiny she would like to avoid. So she was going to be solely the Vitex heiress from now on, spending her money for charity and planning to finally disappear from the public like an aging film star – just without the aging part.

She had planned this for almost a whole year, dropping hints that she was going to leave because of failing health. But despite her preparations Rose still wondered what she was going to do with her life. Her old Doctor had once told her to have a fantastic life, on the day that was the second turning point of her life. Just vanishing from the face of the earth was not going to work for her anymore. It hadn't back then and it wouldn't now. She couldn't bear being an invisible shop girl or a waiting lady again. She had to make a difference somehow. Okay, she had already done that. She had made a difference for herself. Trapped herself here, and now she was transporting a half sentient potted plant named Ursula home. She still wondered why the plant had insisted on that name, snapping for her fingers whenever she spoke of her as a thing. Almost like in The Little Shop of Horrors, now she came to think of it…

'Stop rambling! You're almost as bad as him!' she told herself. If only she could go back to that fateful day. There had to be a way to change events without destroying the whole fabric of time and space. She really didn't want to see any Reapers again. There had to be a way. She would do anything for another chance with her first him.

Out of a sudden there was a whooshing sound she had not heard for more than ten years. Slowly she turned around and saw a familiar shape materializing. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me!"

* * *

A/N: I have not decided yet who will leave the TARDIS. Could be anyone (although I'm fairly certain it won't be Ten, at least not _her _Ten). Let me know if you think that the story is worth to continue.


	2. Chapter 2

I own only a potted plant (that hasn't revealed its true name yet) and several sets of Doctor Who DVDs.

* * *

"_Oh, you've got to be kidding me!"_

As always, none of the passing pedestrians seemed to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. Well, apart from a brunette woman in a grey business suit who stood on the pavement like an antique statue, face turned towards a small alleyway, and desperately clutched a box and a strange looking potted plant like these items were the only things that saved her from the brink of madness. But the pedestrians did what they always do: They walked around the woman who seemed to have suffered the greatest shock of her entire life, flashed her annoyed glances for standing in their way and ignored everything else.

Rose Tyler had seen lots of things. The end of the world, ghosts, aliens in Downing Street, faced down the Devil, Daleks and Cybermen. There was only very little left that could make her speechless. And now she stared like an idiot at a Police Public Call Box, not able to process what her eyes saw. A Police Public Call Box, painted flaming red.

Slowly the door opened and a woman stepped out. She seemed to be about twenty-eight years old with dark blonde shoulder-length hair, about her own height. She was wearing a burgundy red coat, beige boots that reached her knees and a ridiculously long white scarf. She closed the door behind her and only then noticed that Rose was staring at her and her TARDIS like she had seen a ghost.

Eventually Rose came to her senses. She had been working with Torchwood for much too long for not to be able to form coherent sentences in weird situations. Nothing like the second incarnation of the Doctor she had travelled with or his clone. Both of them had been reduced to mono-syllabic sentences in certain situations. The day she broke up with his clone the only reaction she got was 'What?'. Repeatedly. But although she had welcomed lots of species to Earth in the last fifteen years what she said next would have been considered as rude by even the most undiplomatic of them.

"Who are you and what are you doing in a TARDIS?"

The woman seemed only slightly annoyed by her words. At least she didn't show it. "Definitely Earth, then", she said, a frown on her face, her eyes never leaving Rose's.

Rose immediately knew what she was thinking. How could someone see through the perception filter on a TARDIS? Someone who seemed to have never left this planet? Although it was someone who was carrying a potted plant that didn't look like anything on Earth. After what felt like a long time but could only have been a few seconds the woman seemed to have come to a conclusion.

"Let's have a cup of tea and talk. Do you know a good coffeehouse anywhere near here?"

"First left, second right, third on the left, go straight ahead..." a small grin showed on Rose's face when the memory popped up in her mind. "Let's go."

When they had finally settled down in the coffeehouse, cups of tea in front of them, box and plant safely stored under the table, Rose finally decided to start.

"I'm sorry for being rude earlier. I really should have known better."

"There's no need to apologize. I used to travel with someone who behaved quite similar. I'm Romana, by the way. What's your name?"

"Rose."

"Nice to meet you, Rose. So, you're human although you are carrying a plant from Fruluntarladmorenavorsurdared." The name rolled from her tongue like water.

"I stopped trying to pronounce that when a Claxian diplomat nearly suffocated from laughing. Afterwards, I always called it 'Fred'. Oh, the plant is Ursula, by the way."

Romana raised her eyebrows. "Your plant is called Ursula?" she asked, an unbelieving tone in her voice.

"Why not? You've got a sentient grown time ship, I've got a half-sentient plant. Where's the difference?"

"Good point. How did you know that I stepped out of a TARDIS? How do you know anything about TARDIS?"

"Well, there was this man called 'The Doctor' although his TARDIS was blue..."

"Oh, that's just great," Romana interrupted. "What did the idiot do this time?"

Rose Tyler had seen lots of things. The end of the world, ghosts, aliens in Downing Street, faced down the Devil, Daleks and Cybermen. But sitting in a coffeehouse in an alternate universe's London, zeppelins above her head, and having tea with someone who had arrived in a TARDIS and referred to the Doctor as 'the idiot' made her faint.

* * *

A/N: I hope you liked it. Thanks to the person who suggested Romana. I did some research and found out that it would work perfectly. Let me know what you think!


	3. Chapter 3

My potted plant complained that I spent too much time with things I don't own. She still refuses to tell her real name but I discovered she doesn't like to be called Fred.

* * *

_Rose Tyler had seen lots of things. The end of the world, ghosts, aliens in Downing Street, faced down the Devil, Daleks and Cybermen. But sitting in a coffeehouse in an alternate universe's London, zeppelins above her head, and having tea with someone who had arrived in a TARDIS and referred to the Doctor as 'the idiot' made her faint._

Rose regained consciousness and realized that she lay on the floor of her favourite coffeehouse – at least in this universe. It was the only one that could actually do something similar to scones with clotted cream and jam. A universe without clotted cream. Before discovering this she would have said that was impossible. And the lack of decent chips... 'Okay, stop rambling now and find out what's going on!' she thought and sat up to face Romana who looked at her worriedly.

"Are you okay?" she asked, helping her up. "Maybe we should finish our talk elsewhere – without audience", she suggested.

They paid quickly and left a bunch of confused guests behind. In a slightly awkward silence they made their way back to Romana's TARDIS. Both knew that there were questions to be asked and answers to be given – on both sides.

Eventually Romana closed the doors of the red TARDIS behind them, let Rose to the galley and started to make tea. "What's your first question?" she asked.

"You're a Time Lord, well, Time Lady." It wasn't a question. Therefore Romana only nodded in confirmation.

"You know someone called 'The Doctor'. In this universe?" That was clearly not the first question Romana had expected. As the woman already knew something about TARDIS she had been pretty sure that there wouldn't be anything like 'Are you an alien?' or 'It's bigger on the inside!'. But a question that indicated knowledge about parallel universes? That was interesting.

"No. I chose to leave my original universe. Back then, I used to travel with the Doctor, well, his forth incarnation, in his TARDIS. I actually chose her shape after his although blue never was my colour and I thought pink would look rather stupid." Romana grinned at the thought of a pink TARDIS while she poured hot water on the tea leaves.

As Rose didn't see any sparks from the various electronic devices in the galley, she concluded that Romana's TARDIS obviously didn't mind the suggestion of being pink. She was pretty sure that the Doctor's TARDIS would have electrocuted him simply for thinking about something like that.

Romana continued, "When I left I took a small part of his TARDIS with me. And as I am much cleverer than him", she grinned when she thought about their first discussions about that specific topic, "I found a way to increase its growth rate. There's only one Gallifrey in the multi-verse but I found a planet that provided similar conditions." Romana finally set two cups of tea in front of them, along with sugar and milk.

"And you have been here all the time? How long exactly – in your personal time line?"

'How long has she been alone?' Rose thought. 'But more important...' It was quite likely that Romana didn't know about the Time War and the Doctor's role in it. How much should she tell her? She had put together all the bits and pieces the Doctor had revealed in the years they had travelled, more at first, later on he had tried to avoid the topic altogether. The picture that had formed in her mind was a nightmare of despair and destruction, like a painting of Hieronymus Bosch. Her first Doctor – he never told her which incarnation it was, even after his regeneration – had had nightmares of the war which added to the picture. More than once she had been woken by the TARDIS because he needed a hand to hold, someone who showed him that he wasn't alone. Afterwards he always apologized, thoroughly embarrassed. He had done the same for her on several other occasions, especially after she saw her father dying. They never spoke of it; it just was something they did for each other. With her second Doctor it had been different. Although he seemed to be more open, more forward with his feelings, he somehow had managed to shut her out from this part of his life. She didn't believe for one second that the Time War didn't affect him any more. It was the first lie he had told her, not by speaking but by his actions. This was just one of the reasons she desperately wanted her first Doctor back, the broken soldier, quick to anger but honest to the bones. She would do anything to change the events on Satellite Five. But first she had to decide what and what not to tell Romana.

The other woman was speaking again. "Well, I think I left my original universe about two hundred and thirty years ago, give or take. And actually this isn't the universe I first came to. I only spent the last fifteen years here. Coming to think of it that's fifteen years not only in my personal time line but also in linear time on Earth."

Fifteen years. Romana had crossed over to this universe when the walls between them were breaking down, about the time she got trapped here for the second time.

"You spent two hundred and thirty years on your own?" Rose asked incredulously.


	4. Chapter 4

My potted plant promised to reveal her (must be a her, definitely, no male being could be that stubborn) true name as soon as I stop playing with things I don't own. I refused.

* * *

"_You spent two hundred and thirty years on your own?" Rose asked incredulously. _

She was shocked. The Doctor had never admitted how long he had been alone before he met her but she was convinced it had only been one or two years and it had nearly driven him to the brink of madness.

"Well, I crossed the gateway to help a race named Tharils. They were slightly time sensitive and slightly telepathic, so I didn't feel the loss of my people as much as I otherwise would have. And of course I had my little botanic project", she smiled admiringly and stroked the wall. Her TARDIS purred like a content cat.

"Fifteen years ago I felt the walls between dimensions breaking down and tried to get back to my original universe after Biroc, one of the Tharils, and I had freed his people from slavery. I slipped through several cracks between dimensions and tried to sense other Time Lords but didn't have any luck. This one finally seemed to be the right one. I thought I had felt the Doctor if no one else. At first I thought I couldn't sense any of the others because I hadn't used that part of my mind for such a long time. But I was wrong. There was no Gallifrey in this universe. Although I still wonder how I had been able to feel the Doctor here. You seem to be able to answer these questions."

Rose took a deep breath and began, "This isn't my original universe as well. I got trapped here for the first time after two years of travelling with the Doctor. Two different incarnations, to be exact. He never told me which incarnations, he even didn't tell me about regeneration until it happened. I met my first him when I was nineteen. I worked in a shop and one evening I got trapped there with a bunch of shop window dummies. He saved my life and sent me home. The next morning he was there, on the council estate I grew up, tracing them. He was fascinating, sometimes grumpy, with a manic but beautiful smile, battered leather jacket, thick Northern accent. My former boyfriend always called him 'Big Ears'. He hated it, of course." The memory made her smile, despite the tears in her eyes.

"I can imagine." Romana said, smiling as well. "My Doctor always wore this long, multicoloured scarf."

Rose grinned. "One day I found it in the wardrobe room, when he decided to take me to Woman Wept and told me to find some winter clothes. He just murmured something about mislead fashion statements. I never saw it again. I think he convinced the TARDIS to hide it better." She blew her nose and went on with her story, "Finally we figured out where we would find the Nestene Consciousness that was controlling the dummies. Unfortunately the Doctor was captured while he tried to convince the Consciousness to leave Earth. I saw a chance and I took it. I was able to help him." There was no way that she was telling Romana what exactly she had seen in his eyes in those moments. Total indifference towards his own life, but also the despair to be responsible for another death. "Afterwards he asked me to come with him." Rose paused and took a sip of tea. Romana thought she knew what was coming but the other woman surprised her again. "I turned him down. As soon as I saw the TARDIS dematerializing I knew I had made the biggest mistake of my whole life."

"But..."

"He returned and spoke the magic words 'Did I mention it also travels in time?'."

"That's a first", Romana said. "He never asked twice before, as far as I knew him."

"Yeah, he told me. Not the only first thing that happened to him after we met." Rose grinned mischievously. "He brought me back home one year later than he intended to and got slapped by my mum in return."

Romana's laughter chimed through the galley. Even her TARDIS hummed amusedly.

"This TARDIS is different", Rose said thoughtfully. "The Doctor's TARDIS was very much like him. A bit grumpy and lonely sometimes, but always happy when there was someone to keep her company."

"What about the other time ships?" Romana asked. "They all shared a connection. Why should his TARDIS be lonely?"

Rose took a deep breath and gathered her courage. How do you tell someone you've only just met that her entire planet has been destroyed? She had told Jake's family after he had died but this was going to be even harder.

"I'm sorry. I am really the wrong person to tell you something like this", she said carefully. "They're gone. The TARDIS and the Time Lords. They're all gone. There was a war between the Time Lords and the Daleks. It affected whole galaxies and covered thousands of years. I don't know exactly how long it was in the Doctor's personal time line but I think it must have been decades. It kept getting worse with every battle. Finally, after the fall of Arcadia, the High Council decided to use Gallifrey as bait. They retreated and the Daleks followed. He did what he always did, what no one else would do: He followed their request and pressed the button." There was no need to explain who _he_ was. Rose saw the dawning realization in Romana's eyes as if she knew what Rose was about to tell her. "He destroyed Gallifrey because it was the only way to save the universe from the Daleks. He always saw himself as the killer of his people but he thought it had been worth it as long as the universe was safe. It turned out, he was wrong." Rose had desperately tried to tell Romana everything matter-of-factly, but finally her voice broke.

Romana had at first been shocked, now silent tears were running down her face. Seeing the distress of the other woman Rose silently retreated from the galley and went into the console room. She felt that Romana would prefer to be alone in her mourning.

* * *

That was the most difficult chapter I've written so far and I really hope it works. If you have any questions about Romana's appearance in Rose's universe, let me know, please. I will answer them. Oh, feel free to point out loopholes in my theory.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: By the way, as some of you might or might not have spotted I decided to ignore book canon in this story. Therefore Romana was stuck in E-Space until the walls between the universes started breaking down. I hope this answers some of your questions...

My potted plant informed me that she would call her relatives from outer space to stop me from writing about things I don't own. I nicked her mobile.

* * *

_Romana had at first been shocked, now silent tears were running down her face. Seeing the distress of the other woman Rose silently retreated from the galley and went into the console room__. She felt that Romana would prefer to be alone in her mourning._

Romana's console room was different from the Doctor's TARDIS. Where there had been coral like structures here were huge columns that looked like tree trunks with silvery leaves. The main console was similar to the Doctor's although it looked as if there had been less repairs and less jiggery-pokery. Rose slowly walked over to the console and stroked it lightly with her index finger. 'I loved the Doctor's TARDIS,' she thought. 'And you are a part of her.' Suddenly she felt something in her mind she hadn't even realized she had missed for at least fifteen years. Romana's TARDIS had established contact.

On the Crucible everything had been a mess. She couldn't even remember having felt his TARDIS back then. Maybe she had just been too agitated at first with finding the Doctor and nearly losing him again and afterwards confused when she was confronted with a decision between two Doctors.

Suddenly Rose realized that the TARDIS was grieving, too, as if she was reflecting Romana's feelings. She tried to soothe the time ship, something she hadn't dared with Romana. After what seemed a long time the TARDIS finally calmed down and she felt increasing curiosity in her mind.

'I'm Rose,' she thought towards the ship while still stroking the console. 'I used to travel with the Doctor.' The ship seemed to think about that and then a picture of a man with curly hair and a long, multicoloured scarf which she would recognize everywhere appeared in her mind. 'Oh, that must be the incarnation Romana travelled with. I travelled with another one. Two, actually,' she thought. 'But I really should pick up my plant and go home now. I think Romana wants to be alone.' The TARDIS seemed to disagree. As far as Rose could tell there was definitely no other reason for the time ship to lock the doors and secure them with two large bars the Doctor had never found worth using.

"You really don't have to go," Romana said in her back. Startled, Rose turned around. The other woman was standing in the archway leading to the rest of the ship. She still seemed a little bit shaky but in control again, although Rose doubted that Romana had already come to terms with what she had told her. "I'd appreciate your help."

"Why? What happened?"

"I came to Earth for a reason. There's a large fleet of Foamasi ships gathering on the outer rim of the solar system. As far as I know it hasn't been detected by any of your satellites or telescopes yet. It looks like they are planning an invasion and I just wanted to give you a warning. I intended to land at the place where UNIT had been in the other universe because I knew the Doctor had worked with them but something drew the TARDIS off course."

"Oh, that's just great. Another alien invasion. This universe really owes me," Rose groaned. "There's no UNIT in this universe. This leaves us with two possibilities. Inform Torchwood or deal with it on our own. And there are several reasons why I would prefer the second solution."

"I never heard of Torchwood in my original universe. What do they do?"

"Well, like UNIT they deal with alien invasions and stuff. In my original universe the Doctor and I were the cause of its founding because we managed to offend Queen Victoria when we encountered a werewolf. In this one the werewolf nearly killed her and one of her sons founded it to prevent something like that from happening again. After I got trapped here I worked for them. I had to do something with my life, wanted to make a difference, no matter what..." She broke off and continued, "The thing is, I only quit today. I had planned it for nearly a year but it was also a relief. I didn't like the development Torchwood took in the last few years. It became more 'Shoot first and ask later' day by day. Unfortunately my influence decreased since I set my plan into action. Therefore I think we should leave them out of this. There's no one left I really would trust to deal with it appropriately. Unless one's definition of 'appropriately' is to simply blow the Foamasi into oblivion, of course." Rose knew that you sometimes just couldn't avoid a fight, that you had to make a stand for the things you believed in, but her travels had taught her to give everyone a chance first. Although she had to admit that the moral high ground had definitely not always been hers.

"You worked for them and there's no one you can trust?"

"It's part of my story. I promise I'll tell you everything but I think we should deal with the invasion first." As if someone had flipped a switch Rose became what she had been for nearly twenty years: A Torchwood agent planning a mission. "Is there anything you can tell me about the Foamasi?"

"When the Doctor and I encountered them in the other universe, they had fought and won a nuclear war with another race called Argolin. The Foamasi had been a warrior race but after the war they became peaceful. Well, apart from some rogue elements who were only one part of our problem on Argolis."

"What did they want?"

"After the war the planet had nearly become uninhabitable because of the radiation. As the Foamasi are a reptilian race they are much less influenced by radioactivity than any humanoid race and could live on its surface. Therefore the West Lodge of the Foamasi tried to buy the Leisure Hive on Argolis as a base for their further plans of crime."

"Any ideas why the Foamasi would try to conquer Earth?"

"No."

A grin crept up on Rose's face. "Well, we could always ask!"


	6. Chapter 6

I've got the feeling my potted plant owns me and not the other way round. This leads to only one conclusion: I don't own anything.

* * *

_A grin crept up on Rose's face. "Well, we could always ask!"_

"Oh, I knew I would like you. You're exactly like him!" Romana said, a wide smile on her face. She walked over to the console and started to program her TARDIS. "Let's go, then. Could you hold that lever down, please?"

"The dimensional stabiliser?"

"Yes, and then press the third green button on the left. Enhanced space-time control on short distance travels."

"Also known as the 'Sorry, it didn't work – wrong planet – run for your life'-button," Rose said, only a bit sarcastic.

"Oh, you too?"

"Yeah, me too. We got Gelth and Charles Dickens in Cardiff instead of Christmas in Naples. And he also missed by a few years."

Romana laughed. "Sounds like an interesting story." She released the brake and started the dematerialization sequence.

Rose laughed, too. "You should've seen his face. 'I've seen the fall of Troy. Fought in World War Five. Pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party. And now I'm gonna die. In a dungeon. In Cardiff.'" She had mimicked his strong Northern accent and the disgust in his voice. "I nearly started laughing at that, despite the situation."

Suddenly Rose realized they were already in the Vortex. "That's weird. No bumpy ride and no hanging on for dear life," she said.

Romana grinned. "That's because I actually _passed_ the TARDIS piloting test and he just _borrowed_ a decommissioned TARDIS and was halfway to the other side of the universe before anyone could say 'Time Lord on the run'."

"Oh, I _knew_ it had to be something like that. He always blamed his TARDIS!" Rose laughed. Realizing the real meaning of the second part of the sentence, she continued, "Hold on, he _stole_ it?"

"As you know, TARDIS are sentient beings," Romana said while she carefully adjusted their destination coordinates in accordance with the readings on the monitor. "The Doctor just thought it cruel that a fully functional if old TARDIS should be taken apart. And the TARDIS accepted him, otherwise it wouldn't have moved to the other side of the citadel, let alone the universe. Oh, you can force them, of course, but eventually you'll pay for that."

One of the monitors on the main console blinked and Romana moved to read the message shown in Gallifreyan symbols.

"We'll arrive in a few minutes," she said. "Back to the task at hand, then. We need a plan."

"I know the Doctor would just have blundered in and talked them out of invading Earth but I'm nowhere near as talkative." Rose thought about all the times he had talked them out of trouble. And all the occasions he had talked them _into_ it. Talking...

"Can we send them a signal or, I don't know, hack into their communication system?"

"As the Doctor would have said, 'There's nothing this magnificent time ship can't do.' What are you thinking about?"

"I'm still not sure. Just something that came to mind. You said there was a fleet of Foamasi ships. How many?"

"About fifty, each with approximately thousand five hundred soldiers on board."

"They're a warrior race. Reptils. Ectotherm." Rose was thinking aloud. "Do you know something about their ability of space travel?" It was just an idea but maybe being ectotherm led to a dislike of spending large amounts of time in space? Which might lead to...

"They could build space ships, of course, but mainly used them for short trips. They mostly stayed planet bound and used long distance nuclear weapons for their war with the Argolin. Their deep space navigation capacities were somewhat limited, therefore they often interlinked the navigation computers of several ships to one mainframe on the command ship."

"That's interesting." As far as Rose knew – and she had vast experience of alien space ships by now – the main navigation system would only be accessible from inside the ship. And the Foamasi would have made sure that only the command ship could access the navigation systems of the other ships. No one really wanted to end up on the wrong end of a remote control. But she was on a TARDIS... There was a somewhat mischievous look on Rose's face as she asked, "Does your TARDIS have a perception filter?"

"Well, a red Police Public Call Box is not necessarily the most inconspicuous thing on most planets. Therefore you can safely assume I have one." Romana started to grin as well as she slowly realized what the brunette was on about.

"Okay, here's the plan. Well, part of it. We hack into their communication system and get them talking. You know: We know that you're there. This planet is defended. Yadda, yadda... Whatever comes to mind. Can you manage to let them think we're sending the message from Earth?"

"No problem," the dark-blonde said.

"There are two possibilities. First one: They actually come to their senses and just bugger off. Not likely, but still... Second one: They do what your not so friendly neighbourhood invader always does: Laugh at us and continue with whatever they're doing. I think we can assume we're stuck with the second possibility."

"Let me guess: You're not doing this for the first time, are you?"

"No," Rose said. "The first time was right after the Doctor regenerated. I tried to bluff some Sycorax to leave Earth. Not the most successful thing I ever did. Anyway, the Foamasi laugh at us and we just continue talking as a way of distracting them. In the meantime we land the TARDIS in the commando ship. One or both of us have to get out and hack the navigation computer, send them home and delete the coordinates of this wonderful but sometimes really annoying planet from their celestial charts. Your decision. You know more about them than I do."

Rose had learned a long time ago to trust her team members and their knowledge. She had met Romana only a few hours earlier but she already felt that Romana deserved her trust. As the Doctor had said he only took the best. That applied even more to Romana given his opinion of certain other members of his race. Therefore she left the final decision to the other woman.

"I'll go," Romana said. "You keep them talking and distracted. It's your planet. I think it'll sound more credible if you do the talking."

A few minutes later the two of them had hacked into the communication system of the Foamasi commando ship and Rose called them. Romana had tweaked the signal which seemed to be coming from Earth now.

"This is Torchwood agent Rose Tyler." Well, not anymore, but what did the Foamasi know? "I'm calling the Foamasi fleet."

* * *

I made most of the technical stuff up (as well as some of the Foamasi stuff) and I desperately hope it makes sense. Let me know, please. There are still some chapters to go until they can even think about leaving this universe (what is more, I haven't figured out a way yet) but I'd really appreciate your opinion: Should Romana meet the human Doctor?


	7. Chapter 7

My potted plant informed me that actually she owned Doctor Who. I asked her if she lived in an alternate reality. She confirmed this.

* * *

"_This is __Torchwood agent Rose Tyler." Well, not anymore, but what did the Foamasi know? "I'm calling the Foamasi fleet."_

Nothing. Well, that was to be expected, Rose thought. Time for larger guns, then.

"This is Rose Tyler calling the Foamasi fleet. I'm speaking in behalf of Earth. Reveal your intentions. Otherwise we will recognize you as hostile and react in accordance with Article Thirty-Three of the Shadow Proclamation." If she remembered correctly Article Thirty-Three allowed a nuclear first strike as a means of self-defence under certain circumstances. That should really wake them up, given what Romana had told her about the Foamasi's history.

Suddenly the speaker crackled and then a hoarse voice commanded, "Surrender your planet, human." Rose rolled her eyes. How could it be even more cliché than that?

Turning to Romana, she said, "Contact established. Let's land the TARDIS, then."

Romana worked the controls while Rose turned to the speaker to reply, "Oh, really. Why should we do that?"

"Surrender or we will destroy your planet."

Who wrote the scripts for these alien invasions, Rose wondered not for the first time. Couldn't they get at least a bit creative? She really had come to understand the Doctor's reaction to 'It's bigger on the inside' in the last few years. On the other hand, that was her opportunity to go all Doctor on them and distract them with extensive babbling.

"Come on, you lot. Is there nothing else you have to say? It's really getting boring, you know. All these alien invasions and we only get, 'Surrender or we will destroy your planet' or some or another version of 'Resistance is futile'." Thanks to Mickey she had a sound knowledge of Star Trek citations which used to confuse her Torchwood colleagues to no end as there was no Star Trek in this universe.

"You will surrender or we will destroy you."

"As I said. Boring. Besides, this is a Level-Five-planet. Therefore invasions are illegal."

"You can't stop us. We will take your planet." In the meantime Romana had switched the last lever and the TARDIS started to materialize.

"Oh, you think I can't? Ever heard of that family from Clom?" In this universe it had actually been a family business from Raxacoricofallapatorius's twin planet that had tried to sell out Earth in a closing sale. "Sorted that out myself." And this time she had made sure she got all of them. No Margaret Blaine incident that would inevitably lead to losing her first Doctor. She had finally discovered the last aliens in the shoe department of Harrod's. A bit of threatening with acetic acid and they had given up. The trial had been held in accordance with British law and the charges had been attempted mass murder and membership in a criminal organization. They even had had a duty solicitor. And now they spent the rest of their lives in cosy little cells in the Torchwood tower.

"You won't stand a chance against us. Surrender and a few of you might actually survive." The Foamasi sounded a bit like a scratched record.

"Oh boy, if someone had given me ten quid for every time I heard something like that I would be a multi-millionaire by now. Wait, I _am_ a multi-millionaire." Unfortunately all-too-true.

"What?"

Okay, so the 'Confuse the invaders' part of the plan worked. She signalled Romana to continue with step two.

"Mind, I can't even count how many attempted to invade Earth occurred within the last – say – twenty years. There were Sycorax, Cybermen, Jagaroth..." Rose counted more than a dozen further species while she watched Romana leaving the TARDIS; then she turned her attention back to the conversation with the Foamasi. She had to buy Romana time.

~o~o~o~

Romana left the TARDIS, closed the door behind her and entered into a crowded cargo bay. The TARDIS had landed in one corner of the cave-like room. Carefully she made her way along a narrow corridor formed by long rows of metal boxes towards the door on the other side. Turning around she could see that without the perception filter her TARDIS would have stood out like a horse on a space station. Glancing around she somehow got the feeling that the cargo bay didn't look as it should be. Nothing special she could put her finger on, but still...

Shrugging the feeling off she finally reached the door. There was a computer screen next to it asking for a password. It definitely couldn't hurt to investigate a little first, she thought. It might actually save her time later. She really wished she had K-9 with her. Unfortunately he had stopped working when she had left E-Space and entered this universe. Although she had expected this it had been a shock. Not like the one she had experienced earlier today when Rose had told her about Gallifrey, but K-9 had been a companion for more than two hundred years.

Romana dragged her sonic screwdriver out of her burgundy red coat and pointed at the screen. The main menu showed. She selected a section that was likely to contain the ship's construction plans. Navigation was located next to the observation deck. She quickly memorized its location and the shortest way from there to the engine room at the stern of the ship. Once more she got the feeling that there was something she was missing, but again she couldn't put her finger on it.

With the help of her sonic screwdriver she slowly opened the door to the main corridor and turned right to get to the navigation centre. She quickly followed the corridor until she had almost reached her destination. Out of a sudden she turned around in a swift movement, as a reaction to the feeling that someone had been watching her. But all she could see was an empty corridor. Finally she shrugged her shoulders and continued in her original direction although she still had the nagging feeling that something was wrong.

Eventually Romana reached the door to the navigation centre. According to the information she got from the computer terminal earlier the room was empty. As she had told Rose before, the Foamasi didn't do much long-distance space travel. Therefore would everyone who knew about deep space navigation be a high ranking officer. And all of those would be on the bridge by now, listening to their commander dealing with a certain human who tried to be as pesky as possible to buy her time. So far everything had gone according to plan. In addition, she had been relatively certain that the Foamasi had already found out about the lack of space ships with the ability for long distance travel on Earth. Therefore they wouldn't expect any intruders.

She turned to the electronic lock at the door and pulled her sonic screwdriver out of her coat pocket when she suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder. 'Damn,' Romana thought.

* * *

Yeah, I know I'm evil. But the situation just begged for a cliffhanger... Let me know what you think *waves another big lamp post*


	8. Chapter 8

My potted plant still declares that she lives in an alternate reality and owns Doctor Who. I couldn't convince her otherwise, yet.

I'm sorry for the delay. Stupid RL.

* * *

_She turned to the electronic lock at the door and pulled her sonic screwdriver out of her coat pocket when she suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder. 'Damn,' Romana thought._

How could she have forgotten that the Foamasi looked a bit like chameleons? After all, this was a different universe. Species were bound to be at least a bit different here, too. Therefore it was only a logical conclusion that they could have developed chameleon-like abilities. Stupid beginner's mistake. She should have listened to her feelings. She had _known_ something was wrong. She slowly turned around to face a Foamasi guard who effectively blocked every possible way out.

"What are you and what are you doing here?" the guard said.

Romana gave him her best smile. "Well, if you could tell me the way to the ladies room I would be very grateful." She didn't believe for one second it would work but it couldn't hurt to try.

The sentry just glared at her.

"Not going to work, apparently," Romana said. "Well, then. Change of plans. Take me to your commander." The 'leader' line was just too much cliché, she thought.

The Foamasi seemed to consider this for a few seconds and then said into a small communication device on his wrist, "Commander, Sergeant Black Feathers."

"Commander listening."

"I've found an intruder right outside the navigation centre, Sir. Looks like a female human, according to the information intelligence gathered so far. She demands to be taken to you."

"A female human. But that's impossible." A short pause. "Bring the intruder to the bridge and send more guards to patrol the corridors."

"Understood, Sir."

The sergeant led Romana through several identical looking corridors. She still could feel the TARDIS in a distance and knew that she could find her way back without problems. But there was still the fact that the fleet was on their way to Earth and Rose maybe didn't even know of her current situation.

~o~o~o~

Rose had kept her conversation with the Foamasi commander up while the TARDIS monitored the communication between the Foamasi ships and followed Romana's progress through the commando ships on their CCTV. The two women had agreed that it was too dangerous for Romana to carry a communicator as it would give away that she wasn't alone. Therefore Rose had to rely on the CCTV footage to see what was happening. When a chameleon-like figure appeared out of a sudden in the corridor directly in Romana's back only her vast experience with bad surprises helped Rose to keep the shock out of her voice when she said, "Oh, come on, just tell me why you're here. And don't repeat all that 'Surrender your planet' gibberish, I got that the first time and I still don't buy it."

The scene on the monitor changed and Rose saw a Foamasi leading Romana through a corridor.

"We need your planet." A slightly different assertion, at last.

"And _why_ do you need it?" 'Think, think. There must be something you can do to free Romana and get the navigation computer under control.'

"There was a war with our neighbour planet. Argolis." The Foamasi commander replied. "The Argolin destroyed our planet and most of our species." So in this universe the Foamasi had lost. As Rose had discovered quite soon it wasn't only the zeppelins and Britain having a president that was different. There were also species she had encountered in her original universe that had developed in another direction. This had led to a major miscalculation on one occasion. A mistake that cost Jake's life. She wasn't likely to forget that lesson.

"And now you are planning to do the same thing to my planet? What does that make you?" Rose desperately tried to sound calm when her eyes fell on one of the speakers on the main console. If she could connect her mobile with the communication system she could leave the TARDIS and still negotiate with the Foamasi. She raced to one of the boxes she had left by the door. In these boxes she carried the remnants of her Torchwood life. And one of them contained her mobile, the one that hadn't received a call in twenty years, and a screwdriver, unfortunately a non-sonic version. She frantically searched the boxes, tossing pictures, papers and everything else away without a second glance. When she discovered the super phone on the ground of the first box she saw with relief that it still worked. Fortunately her Doctor had not only got her universal free roaming but also a battery that never needed to be recharged.

Meanwhile the Foamasi leader was speaking again: "That makes us the superior species, human." There definitely was an evil smirk in his voice. "You haven't even discovered how to travel in space farther than a few hundred thousand miles." Rose finally found the screwdriver somewhere in the second box, snatched it and raced back to the console. "Oh yeah, this is a really convincing argument. Thanks. Wouldn't have thought of that." Her voice was dripping with sarcasm. Hopefully the TARDIS got the meaning right. She carefully removed the screws from the speaker box, loosened the wires and connected them with the old-fashioned telephone receiver that was attached to the console. Then she dialled the number of her super phone. When the small screen blinked she took the call and could hear the next words of the Foamasi as well through the mobile in her hand as through the speakers in the console room.

"Your planet provides perfect conditions for our race – especially some of your southern continents." 'Africa? South America? Australia? Anything they do have in common?' Rose wondered about this for a moment while she went to the doors. On her way she snatched a small device from the debris on the ground she had scattered there only moments ago. It was an alien scanner that Jake and she had discovered a few years ago in a crashed space ship of unknown origin. As they had found out quickly it was dangerous to use it because it took its energy from the person who wielded it. And definitely too dangerous to leave it with Torchwood. But she had no choice. She needed something with the ability to warn her about further Foamasi sentries in disguise. Besides, loosing some of her life energy wasn't really a problem any more. She left the TARDIS and hurried through the cargo bay following the path Romana had taken a few minutes ago while she listened to the voice on her phone. "Its deserts seem to be an appropriate environment to raise our breed. Although it could do with more radiation, like near the poles."

"We like our planet as it is, thank you," Rose said, while she opened the doors to the corridor Romana had entered nearly half an hour ago.

"That isn't your choice anymore, human. We're going to change it in accordance with our needs. And that means more radiation for our breeding places." the Foamasi commander replied. His next words, however, made Rose freeze in the middle of the corridor. "And if you don't surrender we'll not only destroy the ozone layer above the deserts, we'll destroy it completely!"

* * *

I hope you liked it. By the way, I didn't mean to offend anyone by the Foamasi names. But as I haven't watched The Leisure Hive and the only Foamasi name I could find on the internet was 'Green Fingers' I'll just make them up in a similar style.


	9. Chapter 9

My potted plant finally acknowledged that she doesn't own Doctor Who. Unfortunately, I don't own them, either.

Sorry for the delay (again). But I eventually figured out where this story is going (and I already wrote most of the epilogue – I'm only lacking most of the part between here and there ;-)).

* * *

"_That isn't your choice anymore, human. We're going to change it in accordance with our needs. And that means more radiation for our breeding places." the Foamasi commander replied. His next words, however, made Rose freeze in the middle of the corridor. "And if you don't surrender we'll not only destroy the ozone layer above the deserts, we'll destroy it completely!"_

'That would be even worse than the annihilation of Gallifrey,' Rose thought. The climate on Earth was a complex system. Destroying the whole ozone layer meant that every living being on Earth would slowly die from increasing radiation. And although she was no expert she was relatively certain that even a comparatively small intervention like destroying the ozone layer above the Sahara, for example, would quickly affect the whole planet. She had to find a solution, the sooner the better. Determinedly she hurried through the corridor towards the navigation centre and raised her mobile to answer to this threat, still shocked.

~o~o~o~

The guard and Romana eventually reached a large double wing metal door. The sergeant punched a code into a control panel on its right, the wings opened slowly inside and revealed the bridge in front of them. Romana saw a large group of Foamasi gathered around one console that seemed to be the communication centre. Rose's shocked voice sounded through the speakers.

"That would kill every living being on the planet!"

Whatever the Foamasi threatened to do, it had to have catastrophic consequences for Earth. Romana had known Rose only for a few hours by now but she already was convinced that it would take more than a small menace to shake the woman to the core.

The sergeant approached one of the Foamasi, saluted and announced while pointing at Romana, "This is the woman I captured in the corridor, Sir."

The commander turned to Romana and glared at her.

"Human, you have failed. Your race won't be able to stop us and we will succeed. We will conquer Earth and use its deserts as breeding places for our hatchlings. And because of your resistance we'll decimate your race." Not only his words sounded pathetic.

Romana thought quickly. Rose might have discovered that she had been captured by now. And if this was the case – a really big 'If', admittedly – the other woman would try and continue with their plan. Therefore it would be her task to distract the Foamasi. With Rose being all Doctor-ish it had worked out just fine. She only hoped that she was as good as Rose with that task.

"Good luck, then. Let me know when you find another member of my race," she said sarcastically. "I haven't seen one for years." Only too true.

"You don't fool me. Your plan was to stop us from invading Earth, human."

"And exactly that is where you're wrong. I'm not human." Truth was always what was least likely to be believed.

"Liar!" the Foamasi roared. "You're human!"

"Wrong. Time Lord, well, Time Lady, but Time Lord does sound much more impressive, doesn't it?" Romana replied flippantly.

"Time Lords don't exist!"

"Not in this universe, I'll give you that." Not in her original one as well, as it seemed. Not anymore. Apart from the Doctor, of course, but he had been the one who had destroyed them all... 'Stop it!' Romana told herself. She wouldn't follow down that road right now. She couldn't afford to be distracted by her emotions. Not when the fate of an entire planet depended on them.

"There is only one universe."

"Really, I don't know what they teach at school these days," she sighed dramatically. A bit of acting and driving the Foamasi commander crazy couldn't hurt, could it? "As you should know, but obviously you don't, every single decision people make affects them and their universe..."

~o~o~o~

Directly after her shocked reply to the Foamasi commander Rose realized that there had something happened on the bridge. Listening to her mobile she distantly could hear murmurs and finally caught Romana's voice replying to something the commander had said. She couldn't understand everything but enough to realize that Romana tried to buy her time. Therefore she quickly gathered herself and resumed her way to the navigation centre.

She was about to look around a corner first when suddenly her scanner bleeped warningly. She quickly pressed herself into a door frame that provided at least something slightly similar to an actual cover. Although it definitely wouldn't be enough to save her from anyone who gave a closer look.

To her utter astonishment a Foamasi child stumbled round the corner, laughed and yelled backwards in a sing-song voice, "Come and seek me. But you'll never ever find me!"

Children playing a game of hide and seek on a military ship? Rose had known right from the minute she had met the Doctor the universe was weird, but that weird?

When the child turned around to run down the corridor it caught her look. Rose smiled, winked conspiratorially and put her index finger on her lips in the universally recognized symbol for silence. The child grinned and came closer, tentatively setting one foot in front of the other. When it was only a few feet away, Rose said calmly, "I'm Rose. What's your name, darling?"

"I'm Mala. That's short for Bright Malachite, because of the colour of the dots on my back."

"That's a beautiful name. And a beautiful colour."

"You look different," the girl said.

"Yes, that's because I'm from a different planet."

"I've never seen any other place than this ship or one of the other ships," Mala gave back, sounding a bit sad.

"You have never been to a planet? How old are you?"

"I'm nearly four cycles old and already in school," the little Foamasi girl said. "And my mum says we're gonna visit a planet soon. My dad will find one. He's the commander of this ship."

Rose guessed that the girl would be the equivalent of an eight year old Earth child. And she was the daughter of the Foamasi commander. Maybe that would improve their negotiating position. Hold on, what was she thinking? It obviously had been about time to leave Torchwood for good. She had changed while working there, and not necessarily for the better. Maybe yet another reason why John and she hadn't worked out.

"You are not the only child here, are you?" she asked.

"No. There are lots of other children to play with."

"And all of you have been here all your life?"

"Sometimes I visit some of my friends on the other ships. But we always travel on and on until we find a new planet."

"A new planet?"

"My mum says our planet was destroyed in a war."

She should have realized the truth back when the Foamasi commander had mentioned the war his people had lost but she had been too caught up in distracting him. These people were refugees, the only survivors of their species gathered in a few ships.

* * *

Yes, I know, old Rose would never even have considered using a child as a means of bargain. But she had to grow up and make hard decisions and that changed her. Do you agree? Let me know, I'd appreciate your opinion.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Aaargh! This was supposed to be a relatively short story (five to ten chapters). Unfortunately all characters (mine and those who belong to the BBC) tend to do what they want and thus this is morphing into something much bigger. Must be the bad influence of my potted plant...

* * *

_  
She should have realized the truth back when the Foamasi commander had mentioned the war his people had lost but she had been too caught up in distracting him. These people were refugees, the only survivors of their species gathered in a few ships._

Rose quickly went through everything she knew about the Foamasi. Reptil-like species, large tolerance of heightened radiation, preferred environment seemed to be deserts. Deserts – radiation. That rang a bell. In her original universe especially the United States and the United Kingdom had used deserts as test sites for nuclear weapons, not only in the United States, but also in Australia and even in Algeria. Many areas were still uninhabitable, at least for humans. Although she knew the relevant historical events in this universe – her college education had made sure of that – she wasn't certain about the whereabouts of nuclear tests here. She took her super phone, put the Foamasi on hold and dialled the number of one of her former colleagues at Torchwood. Mala stared at her with a questioning look in her eyes.

"This is a communication device," Rose told the girl. "I'm calling a friend to ask him something."

Mala nodded, but kept silent.

"Colin, it's me, Rose."

Colin Jordan was an attractive black-haired forty-two-year-old genius and the head of research. They had worked together on several projects and even dated a few times. She loved his smart mind and that he could make her laugh. But she had quickly realized that they would never be more than just friends. And that's what they were now – friends. Rose was certain that she could trust him, that he wouldn't bring Torchwood in unless she asked him to. She had even told him things no one else in this universe knew.

"So, Rose Tyler, how's your first day in freedom?" he asked jokingly.

She pictured him sitting in his office, legs on his desk, keyboard on his lap, typing frantically.

"That didn't last long," she gave back, a light tone in her voice. "At the moment I'm somewhere near Pluto – the planet not the restaurant – in an alien space ship trying to stop 'em from invading Earth."

"Nice joke. I must remember to use it on Janice when she calls next time." Janice was one of the secretaries at Torchwood and had a terrible crush on him. But Colin seemed totally oblivious to that.

"I need some information," she said in a more business-like manner. "Do you know the location of some larger nuclear test sites?"

"Why do you want to know that?"

"Colin...,"

"Okay, okay. Well, there's the US site in Nevada of course, we tested on some of our atolls and..." He paused and asked, "Does it have to be test sites or do nuclear incidents count as well?"

"I take everything, really. And it would help if it was located in a desert."

"Desert? Why a desert? Oh, never mind. You wouldn't tell me anyway, would you?"

Dealing with a nine-hundred-something year old alien with the attention span of a three-year-old for more than two years had taught Rose patience. So she only said,

"Colin..."

"Nuclear test sites in deserts. Wait a moment. Incident. A French company built a large reactor in the Sahara, in the early eighties. In 1992 it went critical and contaminated large parts of Mali, Algeria and Mauretania."

"How come I've never heard of this? And why did they build that reactor in the Sahara?" Rose asked. The event Colin had described sounded worse than any nuclear incident in her universe could have been.

"They used some new and untested technology for the construction. I'm not entirely sure, but it could have been alien. The French government considered it too hazardous to build it anywhere in France, for the sake of their population. Apparently they cared a lot less for the nomads living in the desert. And when the incident happened they managed to keep it mostly under the carpet. Not many casualties. That really helped," he said sarcastically.

"But what about the radiation?" The climate wasn't so different in this universe. "Wouldn't the sirocco have transported the radiation to Europe?"

"Yeah, of course. But during that time the countries on the continent were definitely not among those with an open information policy. That only changed at the beginning of the twenty-first century." Yet another difference in this universe.

"Do you know how large the contaminated area is?"

"Hundreds of thousands of square kilometres, I guess."

"Thanks, Colin. Bye."

"Bye, Rose. And don't forget to call."

Rose hung up and listened intently to the events on the bridge. Then she turned around, faced Mala and smiled.

"What do you think about visiting your Dad at work?"

~o~o~o~

In the meantime Romana had explained about parallel universes and E-space. In detail. Eventually she discovered definite signs of boredom, such as several Foamasi trying to stifle a yawn or hiding it.

"...and then you extrapolate the...," she interrupted herself and went on, "Well, nice chat, commander. But if you would excuse me now..." She turned around and walked towards the double-wing doors. Five steps, six, seven, eight.

"Stop!" a voice roared.

'Damn,' she thought. 'Only four more steps and it would have worked.' She turned back again and asked with her sweetest voice, "Yes?"

"You're not permitted to leave, human," the commander said.

Romana's reply came in an irritated tone. "I really thought we had agreed that I'm not human. Time Lady, if you care to remember!"

"That doesn't matter. You will surrender your planet or die."

"Actually, that's a completely different problem. See, my planet doesn't exist in this universe and even..."

"Despite whatever you were talking about there can't be other universes," one of the crew members, a Foamasi with prominent scarlet dots on the shoulders interrupted rudely.

"Oh really, and where did I spend the last two hundred and thirty years, then?"

"I don't care. In a hospital for the mentally challenged maybe? Parallel universes are impossible." Was the Foamasi trying to be politically correct or just sarcastic? Romana went for the second possibility.

"Even humans have more imagination. And believe me, they really can be thick if they want to."

"Surrender your planet, human!" the commander bellowed, interrupting his crew member who had just opened his mouth to reply.

"As I said, I'm not human." Romana began slowly, as if she was explaining something to a three-year-old. She really didn't want to explain the whole parallel universe thing again. "My planet was destroyed in a war. And as it seems, I'm the only survivor here."

Silence followed her declaration. That was a surprise.

In the silence the noise of the opening door wings seemed to be much louder than it would have been otherwise. And even louder was the scream from the door:

"Daddy!"

Romana saw a Foamasi child running towards the commander and hugging him.

The commander bent down and said, "Mala, dear. You know that you are not allowed to disturb me when I'm working."

"But Daddy, look. That's my new friend, over there."

Romana turned around and saw a now familiar brunette standing in the door frame, a brilliant smile on her face.

"Hello," the woman in the grey business suit said. "I'm Rose Tyler and I've come to negotiate the fate of Earth."


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

A little Christmas present for everyone who is reading this... I still don't own them and I'm pretty certain Christmas won't change that.

* * *

"_Hello," the woman in the grey business suit said. "I'm Rose Tyler and I've come to negotiate the fate of Earth."_

Shocked silence followed these words. Romana could see what the Foamasi were thinking. Another unknown person on board and they hadn't even discovered yet how Romana had come aboard.

Rose walked into the control room and continued, "And Romana is right, you know. She isn't human. And one of the few people in this entire universe who can truly understand how you're feeling, having lost your planet."

Romana felt a sting, hearing Rose talking so casually about the destruction of Gallifrey. The other woman turned to her and mouthed a 'sorry' in her direction. She knew what Rose was doing but it still hurt too much.

The brunette turned back to face the Foamasi commander.

"Now we're talking face to face we really should introduce each other properly. As I said, my name is Rose Tyler and I speak in behalf of Earth."

"Commander Vaesite, and I speak in behalf of the Foamasi."

He definitely had the appropriate name. Colin once had been fascinated with geology and told her that vaesite was a form of pyrite, a mineral that had been used to ignite firearms in the 16th and 17th century.

"I am sorry that your planet has been destroyed," Rose began, her compassion evident in her voice. "But do you really want another species to suffer the same fate as yours?"

"We need a planet. There are more than sixty thousand Foamasi aboard these ships," his gesture included the whole fleet, "and they're dying slowly. We're running out of time. We can maintain the life support systems for six months and our food supplies will only last two months at the rate we're consuming them now. Unless we find a place where we can live we'll be starving in a few weeks."

Romana suddenly remembered the odd feeling she had had in the cargo bay. Now she knew why she had felt that something was wrong. There had been mostly containers with food, not at all what she had expected to be the main storage goods of a war ship. She believed the Foamasi commander. Not only because she had seen the stocks but because of the despair in his eyes. She could feel that he cared deeply for his people. Rose must have discovered the same thing, otherwise she would have continued with the original plan.

"You told me that you needed higher radiation for your breeding places. What kind of radiation? Ionizing or non-ionizing?"

"Well, ionizing would be best but non-ionizing such as ultra-violet radiation would do as well."

"And you said your people wanted to use the deserts, didn't you?"

"That's right. As our scientists discovered the climate is just right for us."

Although Rose strictly kept her business-like manner she seemed to be glowing inwardly. Therefore Romana was fairly certain that Rose had found a possible solution that didn't involve an intergalactic war or the destruction of an entire race. Curiously she waited for the explanation that was about to come.

"Well, I've got a suggestion for you. In an act of really massive stupidity my species contaminated a rather large part of one of our biggest deserts with ionizing radiation when a nuclear reactor went critical a few years ago. This part of the desert is uninhabitable for humans. Although I have to ask my government first I think it might be possible for you to settle down there."

"And what do you want in return?" Vaesite asked suspiciously. Clearly he was expecting some sort of trap. Romana was convinced that there was no such thing on Rose's mind but the Time Lady had vast experience with bureaucrats and what a mess they made of situations like these. Some of them really were vultures cycling their dying prey.

"The government might want to have a look at your technology. As our population is growing we could use some advice in how to inhabit deserts, for example. But I think this is something you should be discussing with someone else."

~o~o~o~

Rose already knew who should negotiate this. There were only two people on the entire planet who would be perfect for this task and who she trusted enough not to derive advantage from the situation. She took her super phone and called a number that wasn't listed in any directory. After a few rings the person on the other end of the line answered.

"Harriet Jones."

"Ma'am, this is Rose Tyler. We've got a situation."

This universe's Harriet Jones had been elected President of the People's Republic of Great Britain after the Cybermen incident and held the position for three successive terms. At least in this universe history had played out as predicted by her Doctor, without the second him interfering. After her resignation Harriet had been elected as the chairwoman of the United Nations security council and thus was still one of the most influential persons on the planet. She knew everyone and if there was one person who could convince the involved governments to agree to Rose's plan it would be her. Therefore Rose quickly explained about the Foamasi and her idea.

"Have you told Torchwood?" Harriet asked. Rose had worked with her for years. Together they had formed a Torchwood the Doctor would have been proud of. But after Harriet's resignation and her own declaration that she would quit things had started to change.

"No, ma'am. You know what would happen if I did."

"Yes, I do," Harriet sighed. In the past year there had been several occasions where Torchwood had caused severe diplomatic tensions between the PRGB and other countries. The two women had done what they could to calm the foreign governments down but there were still countries that rejected every suggestion from Torchwood as if the respective bearer was contagious.

"Then you know why I called you first."

"Have you already told _him_?" The way Harriet pronounced the 'him' made clear who she was referring to. "It would be helpful, you know that."

"Yes I do, and no, I haven't," Rose gave back. "He's the next one on the list. I'll keep you updated, ma'am."

"Thank you, Rose. Goodbye." Harriet hung up.

Rose sighed. The next call definitely wasn't the most favourite thing on her to-do-list. A list that kept getting longer and longer all day. And he wasn't going to like her call either. But Harriet was right. He was the best to deal with something like this. She dialled a number she had deleted from her mobile years ago but she still knew it by heart.

A voice answered she hadn't heard for years.

"John Rutherford."

"Rose Tyler."

Silence.

"What do you want?"

"Still rude and not ginger?"

* * *

Here we go. The Doctor (sort of) is in.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

Unfortunately I was right about the Christmas present I definitely wouldn't get. Therefore everything still belongs to the BBC.

* * *

"_Still rude and not ginger?"_

That made him laugh. "You know me too well, Rose."

"Yeah, maybe." She grinned and asked, "How's Sophia?"

"I don't know. We parted three months ago," he admitted.

"I'm sorry to hear that. She seemed to be a nice person. Why didn't you call me?"

"What good would that have done, Rose? You know, you were the reason she left me. Because I still love you." The hurt in his voice was evident.

"I know." She did, really. And in a way, she still loved him. "But I also know that it wouldn't have worked out." She paused. "Anyway, there's been a situation. I think it's mostly sorted but Harriet and I would appreciate it if you were part of the negotiation team."

"Weeeell...," he said in that light familiar tone, "it isn't as if I had much to do to prepare my lectures. Quantum physics. Children's play, really."

"We're gonna pick you up then," Rose said, grateful she didn't have to convince him. "Oh, and I'll bring a friend."

"Another one of your pretty boys?" That made her laugh in return.

"No, I think this time it's more one of yours. See ya in a few hours. Bye, John."

"Bye, Rose."

Rose pocketed her mobile and went over to the Foamasi commander who had politely brought some distance between himself and the women so she could phone undisturbed.

"Commander Vaesite, I've talked to one of our world leaders, Harriet Jones. She has agreed to talk to every government involved and bring everyone together. This will take at least a few hours. And I have asked one of my friends to speak on your behalf as well. Do you mind if we retreat to our ship in the meantime?"

"Of course not." Somehow the rough military officer had changed into a fully-fledged diplomat and personified politeness.

"Oh, two more things. What is going to happen now on Earth is that everyone is going to panic. Therefore it would be wise if you stayed here to make clear that you don't have any hostile intentions. And secondly, do you mind if we pick up my friend first? So you could introduce each other before the negotiations begin."

"No, please, fetch your friend."

"May I go with them, Daddy?" Mala asked. Rose had nearly forgotten that she was there.

"Yes. If it is okay with Rose and Romana, of course." Rose and Romana nodded.

Mala beamed and led them to the doors, happily jumping from one feet to the other.

"You know, I've heard the Doctor unnerve people with constant babbling," Rose said to Romana while they were following the girl back to the cargo bay, "and believe me, the second incarnation I knew near to never stopped talking. But apart from some government lawyers you're the first person I've ever met who tried to distract someone with boredom. And actually, you're the first one to succeed," she grinned.

"I never could have distracted them long enough your way," Romana admitted. "It was brilliant."

"Yeah, but I was running out of ideas. I'm glad you took over."

"I could hear you talking to the commander but apparently you were somewhere else on the Foamasi ship. How did you do that?" Romana asked while she opened the door to the cargo bay.

"Simple, really. I connected one of your speakers with the TARDIS phone and called my mobile."

"How come it works out here? And what is more, the TARDIS let you?" Romana's voice sounded absolutely incredulous. Apparently her TARDIS could be as stubborn as the Doctor's if anyone wanted her to do something she didn't want to do.

"Well, on my first trip the Doctor fixed it so it would work everywhere." Eventually they reached the TARDIS and Romana opened it while Rose continued, "And for the TARDIS... I think she felt something of the connection I shared with the Doctor's TARDIS and she knew I meant no harm." Rose's voice trailed off, the woman lost in thoughts. She knew she had to tell Romana before they went to see John.

"What do you want in the red box?" Mala asked.

"That's our space ship." Rose explained. "It's bigger on the inside, I promise."

"Really?"

"Really." She kneeled on the floor, so she was at level with Mala and reached for the girl. "Do you still want to come with us?"

Mala nodded, took Rose's out-stretched hand and together they entered the ship.

"It's beautiful," the girl said.

"Yes, and I think she likes you," Romana declared while she closed the doors.

"Why?"

"She just told me there was a really big room with lots of toys for you."

Romana set the coordinates for Earth, specific ones Rose had given her, started the dematerialization sequence and then the two women accompanied the girl to the room the TARDIS had provided for her. After the door had closed Romana turned to Rose, faced her with a determined look and said, "You haven't told me everything, have you?"

"No, I haven't. What about a cup of tea? I think we'll need it."

When they reached the galley Romana started to make some tea while Rose took a seat and finally began her tale.

"I think everything began after the Doctor and I encountered a Dalek in Utah, 2012. The Doctor nearly went mad at the sight. I'd never seen him like this before. He had thought they were all gone. He had sacrificed everything he loved, he had fought for, and still a Dalek had survived. A few months later we, that is, the Doctor, Jack Harkness and I, left Japan and out of a sudden we were teleported out of the TARDIS by a transmat beam."

"But that's impossible."

"I don't use that word anymore since I've met the Doctor," Rose said, a weak smile on her face, and continued, "We all landed in game shows with really unpleasant endings. I was trapped in an extremely deadly version of 'The Weakest Link' and when the Doctor and Jack finally located me it was already too late. I had lost. I was transmatted through space to a Dalek ship but the Doctor must have thought I was dead." Rose took a deep breath. Reliving those moments brought everything back. Her voice quivered a bit but she went on. "Afterwards he told me that Jack discovered the hidden transmat behind the disintegrator beam. They traced it to its destination and there they were: two hundred Dalek ships, half a million Daleks ready to conquer the universe, beginning with Earth." A look at Romana's face revealed what the other woman felt at this disclosure. Only a few hours earlier Rose had told her what had happened to her planet and everyone she knew. And now Rose said that everything had been in vain.

"They rescued me," Rose continued, bracing herself for the following part of the story. She really didn't want Romana to know about all her feelings. Not yet, anyway. First she had to finish this part of the story. "We returned to the space station and the Doctor tried to build a Delta wave. But it was already too late. There was no time to refine it. He knew he could finish it but it would kill every living being on the space station and even on Earth. He sent me home. He told me to have a fantastic life."

'Have a fantastic life.' One sentence. Four words. In her original universe he had once destroyed Harriet Jones's career with six but those four words had had an even larger impact on her own life. Along with 'Did I mention it also travels in time?'. She had tried. She definitely had made a difference in this universe. She had tried to make the relationship with his human counterpart work. It just hadn't worked out. If only... 'Stop it!' she told herself firmly and continued, "I just couldn't let him do it on his own. I had to come back. I looked into the heart of the TARDIS. I saved him and then I killed him."

"You what?" Romana sounded horrified.

"I had the Time Vortex running through my mind. It would have killed me within minutes. He pulled it out of me and it killed him instead. He regenerated."

* * *

I hope you liked it. Happy New Year to everyone!


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

I'm sorry about the delay – again. My potted plant already complaint that I did not only neglect her but also the things I still don't own in favour of real life. Now I'm confused...

* * *

"_I had the Time Vortex running through my mind. It would have killed me within minutes. He pulled it out of me and it killed him instead. He regenerated."_

"And you continued to travel with him." Romana said. "How did you ended up here?"

"It was the Daleks. Again. The Daleks, and Cybermen and Torchwood thrown in for good measure. Somehow a breach had developed in the void between the universes and a sphere had come through. In the meantime the Torchwood in my original universe tried to use the breach as energy source and opened it further and further. This enabled the Cybermen from this universe to cross the void and come to mine. When we finally found out what was happening we tried to stop them. We discovered that the sphere contained the Cult of Skaro..."

"The Cult of Skaro survived?" Romana gasped. She was white as a sheet. "How did that happen?"

Rose snorted. "They ran away. Are you okay, Romana?" she asked compassionately. So many revelations in a single day would leave no one untouched.

The other woman nodded. "More or less. Go on."

"Well, the sphere also contained something that was called the Genesis Ark and turned out to be a prison for Daleks. Unfortunately it opened and Cybermen and Daleks began a battle with mankind as prize. The only way to stop them was to reverse what Torchwood had done and open the breach again. Then everything that had crossed the void would be sucked in. But that also counted for the Doctor and me as we had been to this universe before. When it was nearly over I couldn't hold on any longer. I would have died if my parallel Dad hadn't crossed universes to save me. But there was no way back. He told me so when he said goodbye. There was only one small gap left so he could send a projection." She gulped. Now they would get to the part where emotions were involved. But she couldn't do that right now. Otherwise she wouldn't be able to tell Romana about John, and that was something she had to do before the other woman met him.

"And then you stayed here, in a universe without him, and did what he would have done, saving the Earth?" she asked finally.

"Well, actually...," Rose said carefully, "actually, the part of there being no Doctor in this universe is not entirely true."

"Why is it not true? There can't be a Doctor in this universe. You said he couldn't cross the void, didn't you?"

"Well, a few years later the stars started to go out and we discovered that this did not only affect our universe but all of them. The only person that would be able to help us was the Doctor. Therefore we searched for a way back and eventually developed a dimension cannon. After I had managed to cross the void back to my original universe I found the Doctor and he nearly got killed by a Dalek. He somehow avoided to regenerate and directed the resulting energy into a hand he had lost shortly after regenerating into his current form. Then we encountered Davros..."

"Davros survived, too?" Romana interrupted.

"Yeah, and he resurrected the Daleks. So, during the fight, at a time when he held us all at gunpoint there was a metacrisis between Donna, one of his companions, and the hand in which the Doctor had directed his regeneration energy. The result was a human version of him with only one heart and Donna with all his knowledge. The Doctor sent us back to this universe and left me and his human counterpart, John, here." Actually that wasn't the entire truth, but the whole story was already complicated enough.

"So there actually is a Doctor, sort of, in this universe. Is there a reason why you didn't mention him so far?" Romana asked acridly. They really could have used his help in the last few hours when they sorted out the Foamasi incident.

Rose winced at her tone but she could understand the other woman's reaction. "Actually, there is. He gave up the entire planet saving thing, and I think this is partly my fault. We tried to continue where we stood a few years ago, but it didn't work out. We both had changed too much in the meantime. I had been in this universe for about five years and finally started with what my first Doctor had told me to do: Have a fantastic life. And I had one, at least that's what I thought until I went back. When he came here he couldn't cope with being human at first, and worse, he couldn't cope with me having changed in the years without him. Looking back, I realized that I had stopped challenging him when he regenerated. In a way, I had stopped being my own person and I had to learn to be myself again when I came here first. There was no way I would stop being who I had become again. I don't know, with my first him it might have worked anyway, we just would have argued and shouted at each other until we started laughing. And then we met this actress. Sophia Arthur. She was threatened by some aliens and we rescued her. She was the damsel in distress, he was her hero and it was Reinette all over again."

"Reinette? Madame de Pompadour?"

"Yeah, sorry, got distracted. Finally I couldn't stand it any longer. We were only hurting each other by saying something or saying nothing. So I left. He moved to France a few years ago to live with Sophia and became a physics professor at the Sorbonne. I haven't seen him for years, not since my family died. He came to the funeral. Oh, by the way, he's the friend we're picking up."

Romana looked shocked. Again. At this point Rose would have accepted every bet that the other woman would have preferred to be stuck in E-space.

~o~o~o~

The silence between the two woman was interrupted by the TARDIS signalling their arrival. Rose went to fetch Mala from her room while Romana initiated the materialization sequence and landed in the Jardin du Luxembourg. While she waited for Rose to come back with Mala Romana thought about Rose and the Doctor. At the moment she still was uncertain about her own feelings towards him. Of course, he had only followed the Supreme Council's request but he nevertheless had destroyed Gallifrey. She really wished she had more time to sort herself out until she had to meet him. In addition, she was fairly certain that there were several things the other woman hadn't told her. And she could make an educated guess about the nature of these things. She could imagine how the Doctor would have felt after the Time War as she hadn't felt anyone in her own head for more than two hundred years. And then he had met a remarkable, compassionate person. No wonder he had fallen for her...

Romana had reached this point in her musings, when Rose came back to the console room with the girl and asked, "Any ideas what to do about Mala? Walking around in Paris with her isn't going to be exactly inconspicuous."

The Time Lady grinned. "She looks too different for a simple perception filter to work therefore I just thought we'd make her stand out even more." She gave two big red balloons and a box covered with wrapping paper to Mala. "We're accompanying our niece to a costume party."

Rose laughed. "I like the way you think. This is brilliant."

~o~o~o~

The two women stepped out of the TARDIS, Mala in the middle, and strolled through the park towards the address John had given Rose years ago. Romana had been right. None of the pedestrians gave them a second glance. Eventually they reached their destination and Rose rang the door bell. The door opener buzzed, they entered the house and Rose asked the concierge for Mr Rutherford's flat.

"Third floor," the old woman told them grumpily.

"Thank you, Madame," Rose said politely and the three of them went upstairs where Rose knocked on the door. When it opened she said,

"Hello, John. Nice to see you."

As soon as she had finished the sentence Rose wanted to bang her head against the nearest wall. 'Nice to see you.' Did she really say that? She hadn't seen him for years and that was her first sentence? Then she noticed his outward appearance. He was actually wearing blue jeans and a black t-shirt. She'd never really gotten used to seeing him in jeans. Although there were the familiar chucks and his hair was as ruffled as ever.

John smiled, that beautiful smile that still could melt her heart. "Hello Rose. You're looking great. Haven't changed a bit. Weeeell, apart from the hair colour of course."

Right, he'd never seen her with brunette hair. She'd only stopped dyeing it after her family's funeral. He looked great as well, although she spotted a few grey hairs at his temples.

"Come in, please. Who are your friends?"

Grinning inwardly she stepped aside to reveal Romana and Mala. John was definitely in for a surprise.

"Hello, Doctor," Romana said, mischief in her eyes.

"What?"


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

I think most of you expect this to be fun. And that's how I planned it, I swear. But somehow it took a turn and got angsty and emotional. You're warned...

* * *

"_Hello, Doctor," Romana said, mischief in her eyes._

"_What?"_

"How are you?"

"What?"

"Was he always like that?" Romana asked Rose in a stage whisper.

"Pretty much, yeah." A huge grin on Rose's face betrayed her feelings.

"What?"

When he was in a state like this there was only one, well two, things that would help. As kissing him was out of the question, Rose slapped him.

"Ouch." He rubbed his cheek. "What was that for?"

"For being impolite," Rose said.

"When have I ever been impolite?"

"Trust me, there's a long list."

Eventually John recovered enough to give way for them and they entered his flat. It was smaller than she had expected, given that he had lived here with Sophia. The interior was unexpected as well. It fit him perfectly although she really couldn't see Sophia in it. Every room contained carefully selected antique furniture and his collection of books would have made the British National Library proud.

Somehow sensing her thoughts he answered to her unspoken question. "She's never been here. I never told her anything about my past, only the cover story you and Pete made up for me. I couldn't let her in, she wouldn't have understood."

He was right. She'd never been out there, seeing her planet burn. Although Rose had known it was still there, in her own time, she had caught a glimpse of the pain that had been his constant companion since the Time War.

"I'm sorry," Rose said. And she really was. He deserved someone to love him, to fully be with him. Although she couldn't be that person. She'd never told him how much exactly she had changed but today it was time.

He forced a smile back to his face and knelt down in front of Mala.

"And who are you, dear?"

"I'm Mala and Rose is my friend. She's going to find us a planet."

He looked up to Rose and smiled, "You're unbelievable, Rose Tyler. Making friends with a Foamasi child. Wait, did she say you're going to find them a planet?"

"Yeah, well, it's part of why we are here."

~o~o~o~

"Really, Doctor, this is going to be a very long story," Romana said, when neither John nor Rose seemed to be able to get to the point. "What about a cup of tea?"

The group settled down in John's kitchen and the two women told him what had happened in the last few hours.

"And that's exactly why we need you there," Romana eventually concluded the tale.

"I don't run around and save the universe any more! I'm a physics professor, for god's sake!"

"No, you're not and you know it. You're a Time Lord, Doctor. It's time you remembered that."

"I've never been a Time Lord, Romana!" he yelled and glared accusingly at Rose. "I thought you told her."

"I told her nearly everything," Rose replied calmly. "Apart from the fact that you don't seem to understand that you might be human but that aside from that you're still you." She turned to Romana. "I'm sorry, I've had this discussion so many times and I really can't bear a repetition now. I'm going for a walk with Mala. Maybe you can get some sense into him. Believe me, I've tried." She sighed, got up and reached with her hand for the Foamasi girl. "Do you fancy a walk to the playground, dear?" The girl nodded, grasped her out-stretched hand and followed her out of the flat.

As soon as Rose had left the flat Romana shifted to Gallifreyan. "You're an idiot, Doctor."

"John. My name is John," he replied, still in English. "So how come you met Rose? She's fantastic, you know." The favourite phrase of his former self was actually the best way to describe her.

"Yes, I know. I landed my TARDIS and there she was. She solved the situation all by herself. Found out what had happened, came up with a brilliant solution."

"My Rose."

"You love her." It wasn't a question.

"Yes, I do. Almost since the day I met her. She saved me in more ways I care to remember." Eventually he shifted to Gallifreyan as well. "Look how deep I've fallen." A sarcastic smile played around his lips. "The Supreme Council wouldn't be the least bit amused. Although..." He trailed off.

"Doctor, look at me." He flinched at the name but followed her request. She could see the torment in his eyes. "She told me. And she was right. You did what you have to do. I would have done the same."

"Really?" He sounded like a lost child, his eyes seeking forgiveness from hers.

"Yes, Doctor. I'm so sorry I wasn't there."

"You really wouldn't want to be there," he replied, lost in memories. "The cities in flames, the citadel destroyed, the forests burnt to ashes. More people dying with every echelon as our defences broke slowly down." His voice became almost ice cold, bare of emotions. "And then I destroyed everyone and everything that was left."

Romana shivered involuntarily. "How long in your personal time line?"

"I don't know exactly. I lost track after the first few years. It must have been nearly four decades." He still sounded as if he was talking about someone else's life.

"And how long after that until you met Rose?"

"I don't know. I regenerated. And before you ask, into my ninth incarnation." His voice was almost cruel. "I didn't want to but I did. Afterwards I floated in the Vortex for some time." He shrugged and continued in a more gentle tone, "I guess I would still be there if the TARDIS hadn't decided to materialize on Earth and kick me out in front of Henrik's."

Romana chuckled at the thought. He glared at her but eventually joined in.

"That's where you met her?"

"Yep. One of the best days of my life."

"Then tell me, Doctor, why do you hurt her?"

"I don't know. I don't mean to. But you know, I've got all his... my... his memories. Blimey," he interrupted himself. Switching back to English he continued, "I hate conversations like this. All the personal pronouns get mixed up. It's worse than crossing your own time line. Anyway, I'm not him. I'm not a Time Lord. I'm just a human. And I can see her looks. She looks at me and sees that she's chosen the second best. She really should have stayed with him."

"That wouldn't have worked either," Rose's voice said from behind his back. John and Romana turned around to face her. Neither of them had heard her coming back. "Don't worry; I left Mala in your living room. And you're right, I somehow got the feeling that I settled for second best with you. But that wasn't your fault, John. The stupid Time Lord you took my choice away from me when he refused to answer my question. And what is even worse, he did it without knowing all the facts."

Rose didn't sound angry, just tired. She continued, "Part of it was my fault, because I changed when you regenerated. It was hard to adjust, especially 'cos I knew you only regenerated because of me."

He stared at her in astonishment. "How did you find that out? I never told you."

"I remembered that part. I think the TARDIS wanted me to know. Anyway, afterwards I somehow stopped being my own person and making my own decisions. The only things that didn't change were my feelings for you. I loved you in both incarnations although I never told the first you. When I came here for the first time I had to change again, be my own person again, and I really didn't want to lose myself a second time. And you seemed to expect me to be the same person I was when we travelled together. I just couldn't stand that. I didn't want to pretend, I didn't want to live a lie. And that's exactly what it would have been."

"But why didn't you tell me?"

She sighed. "I've tried. You're really terrible when it comes to actually listening to somebody. Both of you, actually. Which brings me to the part that was his fault, John, his, not yours. He took your choice away as well as he took mine. In the first five years, before the events on the Crucible, I discovered that I don't age." He looked shocked and started to say something but Rose knew from experience that this would be the end of her explanations. So she continued quickly, "Well, I do, but very slowly, just like Jack. I didn't tell anyone, not even my family. That's the main reason why I quit Torchwood. They would have found out eventually and being a lab rat isn't exactly what I expected from life." She had sarcasm in her voice and a far-off look in her eyes. John could easily picture her standing on an alien planet, staring with wonder at a world no human had ever seen before. "I tried to tell him but he didn't listen. I already knew I couldn't give you forever. He doomed me to see my whole family die. To see you die. And the only ones who wouldn't die on me were in the other universe, ironically. I was so mad at him and sometimes even at you." She laughed bitterly. Then her voice was as gentle as ever. "I'm so sorry. You told me you loved me and I knew you meant it and I let myself hope. Although deep inside I already knew it wouldn't work. You know why."

Yes, he did. She'd anticipated his reactions. As soon as he would have found out he would have left her to spare her the pain of seeing him die. She wouldn't have minded to stay, he knew that. Unlike him she wasn't a coward. But he would have done what he always did. He would have shut her out. And she had finally decided that she couldn't bear that any more.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Don't be." Then more fiercely, "And don't you dare thinking the not-aging thing is your fault. It was my choice and it was worth it." She shook her head, tears in her eyes. "I really made a mess out of this, didn't I?"

"Well," he said. "I think there were more of us involved, actually." He smiled at her while she wiped her eyes.

"Let me guess," Romana had eventually recovered from the emotional chaos between John and Rose. "He left you two here about fifteen years ago?"

"Yeah. Why?" John wanted to know while realization dawned in Rose's eyes.

* * *

Realistic scenario? I really hope it makes sense after the mess I made of John's and Rose's, well, not-relationship. Let me know what you think. And I promise the next chapter will be more fun. Although it refused to be written for some time..


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

Yay, I eventually finished this chapter (although not only my potted plant but also real life tried to stop me). So here it is – have fun...

* * *

"_Yeah. Why?" John wanted to know while realization dawned in Rose's eyes._

"That's exactly when I came here. As I told Rose before I hopped universes when the walls between them started breaking down, searching for my original one. And then I thought I had sensed him. That must have been the day he dropped you here. So I stayed, only to discover that this wasn't my universe. For a Time Lord he really is an idiot." She glared at him as if he had been able to avoid it.

This somehow broke the tension and the three of them started laughing at a certain absent alien.

John recovered first. "But, Romana, how could you grow a TARDIS in E-space?"

Romana grinned. "Well, unlike a certain person I'm not going to name _I_ graduated from the Academy with a triple first and didn't scrape through with fifty-one percent at the second attempt."

Rose giggled. "I knew it. 'I'm more than clever, I'm brilliant'," she quoted. "Really, John."

"And I bet you didn't tell her your real age, did you?"

He tugged at his earlobe. "Weeell, maybe I rounded it down a bit..."

"When I met him first he was already seven hundred and fifty nine," Romana continued mischievously. "Unless he ran through regenerations really fast he must be more than..."

"Oi! I was seven hundred and fifty six by then," he interrupted her indignantly. "And technically I'm only fifteen."

Rose laughed, "We really should tell that every barkeeper in the neighbourhood. At your age you're much too young for alcohol!"

"Yes, we definitely have to protect his innocent little mind," Romana joined in.

John covered his face with his hands and mumbled something that sounded like "should have known" and "former companions" and "Sarah Jane" which made Rose laugh even harder.

"You know," she told Romana with a conspiratorial grin, "when we met Sarah Jane we first got into a little 'Who's met the scarier aliens'-contest but finally discovered how much fun we could have while comparing notes about a very specific alien."

Romana grinned. "Do you want to know what happened right after we left his TARDIS for the first time and he had explained his rules?"

"Don't tell me you got the 'Don't wander off' speech as well!"

"Oi! You're not gonna tell Rose anything about what happened on Ribos!"

"And how are you going to stop me? Eventually we ended up being rescued by K-9!"

"K-9? Really? What is it with you and your tin dogs?"

John's answer was interrupted by a small voice piping up. "Rose, I'm tired. Can we go home now?" Mala asked, standing by the door.

"Yes, darling, of course." Rose looked at John. "Are you coming?"

He rubbed his neck, then grinned. "Who am I to resist your invitation?"

"The Doctor is in, then?" Romana joked.

"Well, sort of," he acknowledged, becoming serious again.

"Oh no, you're not going back in that mood," Rose said determinedly. "I've had to put up with that long enough. Not going to happen!"

"Maybe you should threaten to slap him again," Romana suggested, trying to keep her features schooled.

"Yeah, that might actually work," Rose gave back, pretending to think about it.

"Oi! Really, Rose, I'd never have thought you'd be evolving into an even scarier version of Jackie!"

"That's your mother? The one who slapped him?"

Rose nodded, a big smile on her face.

"Oh, I would have loved to see that."

"Hey, I'm here as well, you know!" He turned to Romana. "I'd like to see you in that situation. Travel the universe for nine hundred..." At her glare he interrupted himself and continued, "...for more than... oh, crap... a really long time and then get slapped by someone's mother yourself, then we can have this talk again."

"Well, Doctor, as _I_ actually passed my piloting test it's not likely that I'd miss my destination by a whole year," she replied sweetly.

"Rose...," Mala whined, interrupting Rose's giggles.

"Oh, sorry, dear. We got distracted. That happens a lot around him, you know."

Mala looked at John seriously. "Are you going to help us?"

He knelt in front of her, took her hand and said, "I'll do everything I can to find you a new home." Getting up, he went on, "Right, let me just get my coat and let's go."

He vanished and reappeared minutes later; clad in a blue suit she had last seen ages ago on a windy beach in Norway, carrying a brown coat.

Seeing Rose's astonished look he said, "Did you know that Janis was never really famous here? Only a few people were interested when she gave some of her things to this charity auction. Luck for me." He gave them a brilliant smile. "What are you waiting for? Allons-y, Alonzo!"

~o~o~o~

The four of them made their way back to Romana's TARDIS, Mala walking in the middle between Rose and Romana, holding their hands, swinging her arms back and forth. John walked behind them, taking in the lovely picture. He'd never thought he would see Romana again after she left him to stay in E-space. Telling her about the war had been one of the hardest things he ever had to do, nearly as hard as sending Rose home from the Gamestation. Like Rose, Romana understood what destroying Gallifrey had done to him. He only hoped the other him would find the same forgiveness one day.

The women in front of him seemed to enjoy their walk through the Jardin du Luxembourg where the first brown leaves announced the nearing autumn. Rose really looked beautiful with a child, even if it wasn't strictly humanoid, he thought. He would have loved to build an actual relationship with her, to have a family again. But he knew she was right. He would have withdrawn emotionally, something he was really good at. Or worse, he would have tried to push her away, something he was even better at. She walked only a few steps in front of him, her brunette – really strange to see her like this – hair glowing dark red where it reflected the setting sun, but an ocean of missed chances stood between them.

He had known he loved her even back in his ninth body although he couldn't recall the exact moment when he had realized what he felt about her. She had been the reason he hadn't given up after the war. She was the one who came back against all odds to face death with him, the one who stayed after his regeneration. And how had he thanked her for that? Dumped her on a space station with Mickey. And then dumped her here, with him. 'Oh, stupid personal pronouns,' he thought for the second time in a few hours. What he had done here was even worse. Rose had given them a chance, although she already knew what would happen. And he had thrown it away, thrown them away only to run after Sophia.

He had been an idiot, like Romana had said. 'As a Time Lord and as a human,' his conscience added, this time with a harsh Northern accent. The only thing he ever wanted was to make her happy. And he couldn't do that. Not here. Not like this. He only would hurt her again, one way or another. After everything she had done for him – for them – she didn't deserve to see him die.

'But you know that you can change everything,' the Northern voice in the back of his mind told him. That he did. He could see the first outlines of a plan. And he even had the means to carry it out. Sort of. Fortunately another thing he was really good at was making plans up as he went along. 'And sod the rules!'


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

There's plot in this chapter. Really. Sort of. I couldn't believe it myself...

* * *

_'But you know that you can change everything,' the Northern voice in the back of his mind told him. That he did. He could see the first outlines of a plan. And he even had the means to carry it out. Sort of. Fortunately another thing he was really good at was making plans up as he went along. 'And sod the rules!' _

Eventually they reached the central basin in the middle of the park. John spotted a familiar shape next to it and noticed its colour. He stopped dead.

"It's red!" he exclaimed.

"Thanks for pointing that out, Doctor. I wouldn't have noticed," Romana gave back, sounding only a bit sarcastic, and went for the door while she dragged her key out of her coat pocket.

"But why is it red? It's supposed to be blue! Police Public Call Boxes are blue!"

Rose let go of Mala's hand, turned around and gave him an incredulous look. "John, Police Public Call Boxes aren't exactly around anymore. And it's Romana's TARDIS," she reminded him. Then she grinned and winked at him. "Just be grateful it isn't pink!"

"Urgh!" was John's only response to such a horrifying suggestion.

"See? It could have been worse."

"Hey, you two!" Romana called them while she opened the doors and let Mala in. "Are you coming?"

Rose and John quickly followed her inside. Like Rose had done before he noticed the differences between the two time ships. "It's beautiful," he said, lightly stroking the console. "Like..." His voice trailed off while he listened to the familiar hum in the back of his mind he had missed for so long. Although he was a lot less telepathic than he had been as a Time Lord he had felt the loss of his TARDIS strongly.

"Like the forests," Romana finished his sentence. "I wanted something that reminded me of Gallifrey." She set quickly the coordinates and started the dematerialization sequence. When the ship had entered the Time Vortex she continued, smiling, "There's something else I'd like to show you." She took his hand and led him deeper into the ship.

~o~o~o~

The Time Lady stopped outside a simple wooden door, opened it and revealed a state of the art laboratory/repair shop. Right in the middle of the room stood a metal table, covered with lots of metal bits and bobs. John immediately recognized some of them and mentally completed the puzzle.

"What did you do to him?" he whined. "Why can none of my companions look after him appropriately? I mean, it's not like you have to take him for a walk or feed him!" He raked his fingers through his hair, messing it up.

"John, calm down," Rose's voice said. "I'm sure there's an absolutely reasonable explanation for wha-," she interrupted herself, remembering his words which reminded her of something. But what of? Then a thought occurred to her. And those two little satellite dishes looked extremely familiar... "It that K-9?" she asked Romana.

"K-9 Mark II, yes."

"And what happened to him?"

"I've never been able to completely mend the damage the Time Winds did to him," Romana answered, addressing John. "He stopped working again when I left E-space and came here."

John laughed at the memory. "Leave it to a mathematical genius to cause permanent damage to one of the most sophisticated scientific achievements of its time by tossing a coin."

Romana joined in his laughter and Rose asked a little bit confused, "What am I missing?"

The Time Lady answered, still laughing, "We were travelling with a boy called Adric, a mathematical genius, who sometimes took everything a bit too literally."

"I don't think it was only _sometimes_, Romana," John interrupted her.

"Rude again, John?" Rose asked.

"It's true! He always took everything at face value. And so, when Romana..."

"Oh, so it's my fault then?" the woman in question asked, not able to hide the amused glint in her eyes.

Rubbing his neck, "Ye.., uh, no, but _you_ suggested tossing a coin."

"Only because _you_ couldn't admit that I was right about how we would get out of the time rift."

John opened his mouth to answer her. Knowing he would only ramble about being right at the time and that this would get them nowhere Rose ignored him and asked the Time Lady, "So you tried to repair him?"

"I narrowed it down to the motivator. There must be a glitch I haven't detected yet."

"Do you want me to give it a try?" John asked. "I learnt a lot about the physical laws of this universe when my TARDIS broke down on our first visit."

"Your TARDIS broke down?"

"Yeah, well, the Time Vortex is different here. It cost me a decade of my life when I gave her enough energy to get us home again."

Romana gave him a disbelieving look. "I know the Time Vortex is different here. As my TARDIS is an offspring of yours she depends on the same energy. But it obviously didn't occur to you that you could simply have reversed the polarity of the..."

"Neutron flow?" Rose finished her sentence, amusement in her voice.

"That's just gibberish," John said dismissively. "Nobody in the entire history of time and space travel actually solved a problem by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow."

"Oh, that's interesting," Romana gave back, giggling. "I distinctly recall a certain someone telling stories always ending with 'and then I reversed the polarity of the neutron flow'. Is there something you want to tell us, Doctor?"

He tugged at his earlobe. "I... uh... well... maybe I sometimes..."

Rose took pity on him. "So what did you do?" she asked Romana.

"I reversed the polarity of the time rotor in my TARDIS. That enabled her to..."

"Oh yes!" John interrupted her, beaming. "The TARDIS could use this universe's energy instead of being repelled by it. That's absolutely brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?" Pausing. And with a glare at the two women, "Don't answer that!"

Rose and Romana miserably failed to keep a serious face, looked at each other and broke into laughter. Eventually they calmed down and Romana said, "Feel free to try to repair K-9. I'll have a look at the coordinates in the meantime."

She left the room and headed for the console room. John was already absorbed in his task and didn't even notice Romana leaving. Therefore Rose followed the Time Lady without any further comment and went to the galley. She dragged out her super phone and called Harriet Jones to inform her about the current situation.

After the introductions she directly got to the point. "He agreed to participate in the negotiations on behalf of the Foamasi."

"That's good news. And we'll certainly need him."

"Ma'am?"

"Most heads of government seemed to generally accept our plan as the area in question is of no use to them but..." The stateswoman hesitated for a moment, then she continued, "I called the President. He wants to bring Torchwood in. And we both know where that is going to end."

Rose sighed. She knew that Harriet had had no choice but to call the President of Great Britain. But bringing Torchwood in would lead to lots of problems. Not only that they would want to scavenge as much as possible of the Foamasi technology but they had also royally pissed off some of the African governments they needed to agree with the plan. Then she had an idea.

"Does he know that I resigned?"

"I don't think so. Why?"

"Well, then let's just tell him that I'm already aware of the situation and will participate in behalf of Torchwood. And to avoid any further suspicions we could bring in Colin Jordan. He's Torchwood's head of research and thus a relatively high ranking official. As we already said that we want a look at their technology he would be a logical choice. But more important, I trust him. I think he would cover up for us. And when finally someone at Torchwood finds out what is going on the Foamasi will already live save and sound in their new homes in the Sahara."

"That might actually work. But..."

Rose grinned. "John and I have a really convincing good cop-bad cop performance. Although I never though the first time I played the bad cop would be to convince the President to leave a group of aliens alone!"

Harriet laughed at that and they agreed that Rose would inform Colin and the Foamasi and Harriet would call the President again.

"Oh, Harriet, just one more thing," Rose said. "Is it possible to use your flat for the landing? I really don't want Torchwood to get their hands on a fully functional trans-dimensional sentient time ship. I like history as it is."

"Of course, feel free. See you in a few hours."

"Goodbye, Harriet."

Rose hung up and dialled Colin's number.

"Colin Jordan."

"Hi Colin, it's Rose."

"Rose! I didn't expect you calling again so soon. What happened?"

"Oh, well, do you remember what I said when I called you a few hours ago? Where I was?"

"You said...,"

"Exactly," she interrupted him, not wanting to talk about anything important on a mobile. She was certain that Torchwood had never laid hands on her super phone but she wasn't so sure about the regular mobiles of their employees. "And it was the entire truth. Do you trust me?"

"With my life."

Rose winced. The last person who had said that to her had been Jake. And Jake was dead. Which had been at least partly her fault. Nonetheless she said calmly, "What I'm doing now must stay out of Torchwood as long as possible. Are you okay with this, Colin?" She held her breath, waiting for his answer.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

Sorry about the delay. My life went absolutely crazy in the last few weeks. So this chapter is a bit longer than usual to make it up to you. Have fun!

* * *

_Rose winced. The last person who had said that to her had been Jake. And Jake was dead. __Which had been at least partly her fault. Nonetheless she said calmly, "What I'm doing now must stay out of Torchwood as long as possible. Are you okay with this, Colin?" She held her breath, waiting for his answer._

"Rose, normally I don't repeat myself: I trust you with my life. If you say that Torchwood shouldn't know about this then I won't tell them." Just by hearing his voice she could see him as if he was sitting in front of her, dead serious about what he told her.

Rose exhaled slowly. This was what she had been hoping for. "Do you remember our first date?" she asked carefully.

"I don't think I'll ever forget that," he laughed.

Rose laughed as well. They had been on their way back from a business trip to Glasgow when aliens had captured their train. After sorting the whole situation out, which included a high speed chase through London's sewers, they had eventually discovered a small fish'n'chips shop in an even smaller alley. Covered in mud and slime and nearly famished they had entered it. The owner had given them only a short glance and called the police. They ended up having chips in a cell at the local police station while the DC in charge called Torchwood to verify their identity.

"No, me neither," she replied. Not as unforgettable as having chips with a Time Lord after seeing the entire planet burn in the year five billion but still a memorable day. Jokingly they had always referred to the police station as the location of their first date. "What time is it now in London?"

"Four o'clock in the afternoon."

She thought about it for a moment, then she said, "We'll meet you there in two hours." Six o'clock was well after official office hours. Thus Colin wouldn't raise any suspicions by leaving early. Oh, the advantages of relying on a time ship that landed accurately, she thought.

"Okay. See you then, Rose."

"Bye, Colin."

She pocketed her mobile and went to the console room to inform Romana.

~o~o~o~

One last adjustment with Romana's spare sonic screwdriver which he had found in one of the cupboards and the control lights in K-9's body flickered back to life.

"System re-booting," the tin dog announced. And seconds later he added, "Re-boot completed, Master."

"K-9, you're back!" John exclaimed. "And you recognize me."

"Affirmative, Master. Where is Mistress?"

"Oh, we definitely should tell her the good news as soon as possible." John carefully took the robot dog and placed it on the floor. "Let's go find her."

He silently asked the TARDIS if Romana was still in the console room and the time ship confirmed it. Of course he had heard her when she told him where she was going. Actually he was nowhere near as oblivious to his surroundings as his companions tended to believe. Most of them he had fooled with his behaviour but Rose and Romana belonged to the very exclusive minority who had simply ignored him in return. To be honest, they _were_ the very exclusive minority.

On his way to the console room he met Rose who just left the galley. She greeted him with a slightly wicked smile. "Remember Teluvis V?" she asked.

"When we met this gravitationally challenged megalomaniacal dollop of slime – wasn't he sort of pink-ish? – who could have been right out of an Austin Powers movie, apart from his outward appearance of course?"

"Yeah, although I was more thinking about his mother."

It had taken years and he had only barely avoided seeking counselling but eventually he had managed to forget that acquaintance. Mostly. The female – woman wasn't the right word for someone looking like a big, orange ball of mud – alien had been nearly as megalomaniacal as her pink-ish son and it had taken a really exhausting performance of good cop-bad cop to get her cooperation in overthrowing her son.

"Thanks for reminding me," he replied sarcastically. "I was trying to forget that."

Rose laughed. In short sentences she related her conversation with Harriet Jones and concluded, "I hope your acting skills are up to date, John." But why was she still smiling like that? "Although this time I get to play the bad cop." Oh.

Then Rose spotted the tin dog trailing behind John. "You repaired him!" she exclaimed and hugged him spontaneously. He was startled for a second; then he hugged her back enthusiastically, engulfing her in his coat. He couldn't even begin to tell how much he had missed this.

"Romana will be so happy. What did you do?" she asked him while they resumed their way to the console room.

"Well, she had the problem already narrowed down to the motivator. I replaced a few chips, recalibrated the system to fit a different set of physical laws and temporal mechanics-" he looked at her as if he wanted to know if she was still following.

Rose just nodded and said, "I remember what you told me. The gravity is slightly higher in this universe which leads to time moving a bit faster here. Poor Einstein. The Special Theory of Relativity isn't as universal as he thought."

He beamed at her. "You'll never cease to amaze me, Rose." Although he desperately hoped he would stop underestimating her one day. "Luckily Romana had the right parts and already done most of the work. She would have found the problem within a few hours as well."

Being that modest was totally uncharacteristic for him. Rose gave him an incredulous look and poked his chest with her index finger.

"Who are you and what did you do to the Doctor?" she asked, only to wince at her slip of tongue. Fifteen years ago he had asked her to call her John because he felt he wasn't the Doctor, that he couldn't be the Doctor as a human. She had followed his request although she couldn't really see how a different name would change anything. She had thought that maybe it would help but it hadn't.

This time he just smiled at her, held out his hand invitingly and said, "Let's tell Romana, shall we?"

He just let it pass, she wondered again while she took his hand. It seemed he hadn't even noticed. Could it be that he was healing, at last?

~o~o~o~

Half an hour later a certain red police public call box materialized in a cargo bay at the Foamasi command ship – again. The four of them left Romana's TARDIS, led by an impatient Mala. John bounced on his toes for a moment as if to savour a moment of not being earthbound. This had been one of the worst things about being stuck in this universe. Since the moment he had looked into the Untempered Schism he had been on the run, never looking back, always on his way to a new planet, a new sky. Being stuck on Earth in his third incarnation had been one of the worst times of his – oh well, let's just face it, shall we? – millennial life.

It wasn't the domesticity that had scared him, no, he was scared of himself. He feared to lose the will to learn something new, feared to become a ghost of a man, like so many people did who lost the most important thing that defined them. But as he realized now he had only achieved the one thing he had tried to avoid. By being scared of living, being scared of accepting this life as a gift he had given up not only himself but also Rose and hidden himself in his role as a physics professor and Sophia's lover. That was all it had ever been. A role. Just an act he was playing like he thought people expected him to be. He'd even managed to fool Sophia and she was an actress, for god's sake. She really should have been able to see right through everything. He had made a coward's choice, again. Rose on the other hand had lived up to the challenge, carved out a life for herself, not once but twice. And even now, at a time when she had to quit Torchwood for her own sake she was _living_. Trying to trick her former employer, to help aliens she had only met today, being _Rose_. With an unreadable expression on his face he looked at her and unconsciously took her hand.

Romana opened the door to the corridor and they turned right to follow Mala who lead them to the bridge as quick as possible. John and Rose followed hand in hand and Romana, who had quickly sealed the cargo bay again with her sonic screwdriver and therefore lagged behind a few metres, shot thoughtful glances in their direction from time to time.

As the Foamasi seemed to trust them they had withdrawn all the guards and they reached their destination undetected. Mala punched the code in the terminal and the door wings opened. Seeing her father she immediately launched herself into his arms and hugged him tightly, laughing and crying at the same time.

"Daddy!"

"Mala, dear! I was starting to worry about you. What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Everything was wonderful. A blue sky and so much green and trees and these big stone things where people live... I can't remember what they're called. And the air was so different there, full of different scents and the sun was shining and there were animals everywhere, birds and insects and lots of others I didn't know. And so many people and I got some pretty red... _balloons?_ Is that the right word, Rose?" All this came out in one quick rush. Rose could see that the little girl was overwhelmed by everything she had seen. She nodded, silently cursing herself. She should have explained more but she had pretty much forgotten that this girl had never been to a planet before, never seen a city or houses. Everything must have been totally, well, _alien_ to her. John squeezed her hand, telling her without words that everything was going to be okay.

Eventually Mala calmed down, wiped her eyes and let go of her father. Commander Vaesite took her hand and welcomed Romana and Rose back. Then he turned his attention to John.

"And who are you?" he asked.

Time to decide, he thought. Time to decide what to do with this short human life he was given. He could feel Rose's hand strengthening its grip on his, giving him moral support. After what seemed an eternity to him but only lasted a split second he reached a conclusion. There was no decision to make, not really. Although it had taken him fifteen years to discover this.

"I'm the Doctor!" A brilliant smile accompanied this assertion. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the same smile mirrored on Rose's face.

"Doctor who?"

"Just 'The Doctor'!" the two women chorused.

"The Doctor," the commander repeated, sounding a bit sceptical. "That's just a title. As far as I know humans do have proper names." He looked at the Doctor expectantly.

"What's wrong with 'The Doctor'?" he complained, turning towards Rose and Romana. "It's not as if my name was, uh, I don't know, the Meddling Monk. I mean, what does that tell about him? Weeell, of course, he always wore a cowl and meddled with time, but apart from that?" He noticed the strange look the commander gave him and continued, "Oh, sorry, where were we? Right. Names." He sighed. "If you insist on a proper human name, John Rutherford. At least that's what my passport says." Grinning manically again, he rambled on, "Fascinating man, Rutherford. Discovered the proton. Well, actually he only was the first one on Earth, you know. Of course, his first name was Ernest, but I don't think that would have suited me. I mean, do I look as if my name was Ernest?"

At this point Rose decided that that was enough and stomped on his left foot. Hard.

"Ouch!" He glared at her only to have her staring back. "Sorry," he mumbled and got a sweet smile and a whispered excuse in return.

Romana desperately tried to hold back her giggles. Rose definitely knew how to handle a rambling Time Lord. And this version had an even bigger gob than the one she had travelled with.

Rose turned to Commander Vaesite and said, "I convinced the Doctor to speak on your behalf because he's got experience with your problem. He is a Time Lord who stranded on Earth fifteen years ago and as you might have noticed he could talk for the planet if he wants to." She smiled.

The Doctor looked as if he wanted to say something but Rose whispered, "Let's not overcomplicate things right now. You can explain the whole Time Lord/human metacrisis thing later."

She continued, becoming serious again, "Unfortunately a problem has arisen in the meantime. The President of the People's Republic of Great Britain has decided that one of our top-secret government institutions should participate in the negotiations as well because they are experienced in dealing with extra-terrestrial life forms. Oh, and in case you're asking yourself what that means: 'Dealing with extra-terrestrial life' does translate as 'Shoot first, ask later' with certain members of this organisation." Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

The Foamasi looked at her suspiciously, as if he wondered how she could know these things about a top-secret organisation.

Rose went on, "As I have worked for them until today..."

Commander Vaesite interrupted her ruthlessly, seeing his suspicions confirmed. "You what?" he roared and approached her threateningly.

* * *

Sorry, I'm a loss when it comes to physics (good thing I'm writing science fiction then, isn't it?). I made that bit about gravity, time and the Special Theory of Relativity up and I've got the dim feeling that it's complete rubbish. So please feel free to correct me...


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

_Commander Vaesite interrupted her ruthlessly__, seeing his suspicions confirmed. "You what?" he roared and approached her threateningly._

The Doctor stepped in front of her and glared at the Foamasi. Rose laid her hand on his arm to calm him. They really didn't need him to go all 'Oncoming Storm' on the commander for nothing. The only person who was going to take responsibility for her actions was herself. So she looked the commander straight into his eyes and confirmed, "Yeah, it's true. I've worked for them for nearly twenty years. I didn't like everything they did and I've tried to change things for the better as much as I could. Unfortunately I never managed to get rid of all those xenophobic trigger-happy operatives who never seemed to be able to get over the Cybermen wars."

For a split second she felt as if she was back at Canary Wharf, then she took a breath and went on, her voice very calm, "Don't get me wrong. I'm far from being a pacifist and if you tried to invade Earth I would do everything in my power to stop you to protect everyone on the planet. You are a soldier, you would do the same if our roles were reversed. But I'm not proud of some of the things I have done to protect my planet, and some of my decisions still haunt me in my dreams." The Doctor gave her a questioning glance but she ignored him. "What I am proud of is that I kept all my promises so far, except one, and I intend to keep the one I'm making now: I'm going to find you a new home, and if that means to cheat on my former employer and the President and possibly have to leave the planet for good, then so be it."

Silence followed her words. Commander Vaesite still stared at her as if he was trying to read her mind, trying to decide if she was telling the truth.

After a very long minute he relaxed, obviously having decided to believe her and asked, "And what are we going to do about... your former employer?"

"Many people know that I worked for Torchwood and that includes the President of Great Britain. What he doesn't know yet is that I quit. Therefore we're gonna put up a little charade for him." She grinned mischievously. "I'm gonna be the big bad Torchwood agent, trying to get as many concessions and giving you as little in return as possible, assisted by one of the very limited number of colleagues I trust. And the Doctor and Romana are going to make as many demands on your behalf as they can think of with those big Time Lord brains, and believe me, I don't even dare to imagine what they might come up with."

"Like, I don't know, Africa as a whole?" Romana suggested mockingly.

"And at least half of Australia?" the Doctor joined in.

"Let me guess, and in return I only gonna get your dirty socks?" Rose asked.

"Nah, two's definitely too much. What about one?"

"Oh, Doctor, now you're being unreasonable. I'd say she can have my scarf as well."

"Thanks, Romana. Although I know it's only 'cos you hope I'll strangle myself with it!" Rose laughed.

Commander Vaesite stared at them disbelievingly. "You're mad!"

"Yep. Certified on a couple of dozen planets. And that's why it'll work. No one's gonna expect this," the Doctor replied, bouncing up and down on the tips of his toes. "And you will of course be the very stereotypical big bad alien who threatens to destroy the planet by pressing the metaphorical big threatening red button." He grinned manically. "Do you agree?"

"I have no choice, haven't I?" the commander replied wearily. "If I don't work with you my people will die. And I can't let that happen."

The Doctor looked into his eyes and saw something he knew only too well. The knowledge that you couldn't save everyone and the despair of having lost nearly everything that you loved.

"I normally don't make any promises because in most cases I won't be able to keep them," he said. "Not because I don't want to but because I can't. This time, though, I promise you and your daughter," he smiled at Mala who still held her father's hand, "that I'll do everything in my power to persuade all those stupid greedy politicians to give you everything you need to build a new life on Earth."

~o~o~o~

Half an hour later Commander Vaesite had appointed those of his most trusted officers he wanted to accompany him to Earth and take part in the negotiations and left his fleet in the care of his first officer. So five Foamasi officers, a Time Lady, a human Time Lord metacrisis, a nearly immortal human and Mala, who had somehow managed to persuade her father to let her come with them, made their way back to Romana's TARDIS.

Looking at the mixed group a conversation with her first Doctor came to Rose's mind. On Platform One she'd asked him if guests meant people and he had answered that depended on what 'people' meant for her. It had taken some time to get used to but that's what they were to her now: people, no matter where they came from or what they looked like.

The Doctor interrupted her musings by taking her hand and whispered in her ear, "You didn't break it, you know. I did."

Rose gave him a confused glance in return.

"Your promise," he clarified, still whispering. "You didn't break it."

"But I promised you forever. And then I left you."Rose kept her voice low as well.

"And it was the right thing to do, Rose. You know that. It wouldn't have worked and it would have been wrong to tie yourself to me just because of that promise."

He looked at her in earnest until she relented. She nodded silently and pressed his hand. "You're my best friend. You know that, don't you?" she said.

He smiled at her. And she was his, he thought. He would do anything for her as she had done for him countless times. Lost in memories he only noticed that they had reached the cargo bay when Romana opened her TARDIS and introduced the Foamasi officers to the concept of dimensionally transcendental space ships. Although she carefully avoided to mention the 'it also travels in time' part.

A few minutes later Rose suggested she would have a cup of tea (or their respective equivalent) with the Foamasi in the galley while the two others programmed the TARDIS for their destination. Even without trying to land on a spot in space and time the Doctor often had run around the console like mad to stabilize their flight path. Although Romana's TARDIS was in a much better shape than the Doctor's had ever been since the Time War their planned destination required a lot of precision and it would be much easier to fly the ship together. And Rose had seen his fingers itch to work the controls when he had entered this TARDIS for the first time.

She knew he missed his TARDIS, more than he could ever miss her. The ship was the last piece from his past, the place he called home. So she had shared a conspiratorial grin with Romana on their second trip to the fleet and the two women had silently agreed to let him fly the TARDIS on their way back to Earth.

While Rose retreated to the galley with their guests Romana gave the Doctor a mock salute. "Awaiting orders, sir!"

"Coordinates checked?"

"Checked and locked."

"Then what are we waiting for?" The Doctor asked, beamed at Romana, turned a dial and loosened the hand brake.

His own literally ancient TARDIS had been held together by spit, duct tape, prayers and sheer force of will. In comparison Romana's TARDIS was a toddler, only a few hundred years old, and in perfect condition. He had not even finished that line of thought when the ship suddenly shook like mad. A toddler with a temper tantrum, obviously.

"What's wrong?" he shouted, desperately trying to keep his position at the console. The boxes Rose had deposited next to the doors when she had entered the ship for the first time slid over the floor in every imaginable direction, shattering their contents everywhere in the room. Was that a potted plant? Well, whatever it was, it used its caulises to cling to one of the support columns.

Romana's voice interrupted his thoughts. "I don't know. Everything should be alright. She's never done that before," she shouted back, typed commands and stared at the monitor, trying to find out what happened. The swirling Gallifreyan symbols didn't tell her anything that could be the reason for their situation. Nothing seemed off, but still the TARDIS shook like a building during an earthquake and it seemed to get worse. The whole structure creaked as if it was torn apart. The Doctor moved aside to reach for a lever and a piece of debris from the ceiling landed where he had been only moments before, rolled a few feet and vanished under several sheets of paper that littered the floor.

The two pilots pressed buttons and switched levers to stabilize them without any effect when out of a sudden everything went back to normal. They exchanged confused glances. "What just happened?" Romana asked, still a bit shaky.

"Not a clue," he gave back, raking his left hand through his hair. He pulled out his glasses, put them on and stared at one of the monitors. Not that the readings showed him anything Romana wouldn't have noticed as well, he admitted to himself.

"Something wrong?"

The Doctor turned around and faced Rose who had just entered the console room and overheard their last words. Seeing the chaos in the room she corrected herself, "Oh, wrong question. What _happened_?"

Now he looked even more confused than mere seconds before.

"Didn't you notice anything?"

"Well, no."

"The whole ship was shaking like mad one or two minutes ago. You can't have missed that."

"Sorry?"

"The whole ship..."

"I heard you the first time. And no, I didn't notice that."

"That's impossible!" the Doctor muttered to himself. She heard him anyway and sighed exasperatedly.

"Everything was fine in the galley. You'd think I'd notice all that china breaking, don't you?"

Indeed, good point. Not likely to miss something like that while having a tea party with foreign diplomats.

"Only the console room, then?" she asked. "Is that possible?"

"Definitely." Romana replied. "Due to the TARDIS being dimensionally transcendental the rooms in this ship can be affected independently. Although I'm wondering how anything from the outside could do this. Although it's only a Type 40 it has got pretty good defences."

"So was the TARDIS just being polite and protected the galley from what was happening here – whatever that was – or is there more to it?"

"We don't know yet," the Doctor gave back, "but we'll find out eventually."

"Most likely when it's too late." Rose sighed theatrically, then grinned at him. "Just like the old times, yeah?"

"Oh, definitely!"He smiled at her fondly and asked Romana, "Are we still on course?"

"As if nothing happened. Weird."

Rose laughed. "In case you haven't noticed yet – weird things happen around us all the time."

"Oh, I think I got an impression!" The other woman laughed as well.

"So, if we're still on our way to Earth, why don't you discuss the basis for negotiation with our guests," Rose suggested, turning to the Doctor, "while Romana and I clean up this mess." She gestured at the console room that was littered with large numbers of sheets of paper and lots of metal bits and bobs. "It seems most of it comes from my boxes anyway."

The Doctor left the console room and Rose started to collect the sheets. As it would take her hours to get them back into order she quickly decided to just make a business and a private stack and leave the rest for later. She emptied one of the boxes and threw everything connected to work in, papers, the scanner she had used to detect Foamasi in disguise when she had entered their ship for the first time, something looking like a stone that she couldn't connect to a specific case at the moment, folders containing case reports.

Romana still tried to find out what had happened while casting glances at Rose. After a few minutes she sighed and said, "I really don't know what happened. The scans say there's nothing out of the ordinary." She switched the monitor off and knelt on the floor to help Rose gather her belongings.

"Just throw everything with a 'Torchwood' sign into this box," Rose said. "It'll be mostly case reports I, uh, _borrowed_ from Archives and conveniently forgot to give back."

"You snatched case reports? What for?"

"Well, some of my superiors aren't really persons I'd trust with innocent aliens seeking sanctuary on Earth. Over the years I helped some of them to get an official identity and buried the files in the archives. They could only be retrieved with my personal access code. But I'm not sure they'd be safe now that I left. Some people never trusted me, said I was too alien-friendly. I've got the feeling they will review all my case reports. So I hid the important ones under a hardcopy of the most boring government household report I've ever seen and walked right through the front doors." She grinned.

"And what are you going to do now?"

Rose immediately knew that the other woman wasn't referring to their current situation.

"I don't know. Not really. I mean, Rose Tyler is going to vanish from the public, of course. The only thing I know is that I can't live a quiet life, spending all the money I wish I hadn't inherited."

Romana nodded. She would have to talk to the Doctor, she decided.

~o~o~o~

Some time later the TARDIS materialized in a small alleyway which Rose recognized as soon as she stepped out of the ship. On the left was the police station, on the right multi-storey brick storage buildings. The floor was littered with broken bottles and paper; dust bins lined the walls of the storage houses. The last time she had been here she had been covered in mud and slime and just had had chips in a police station with Colin. They had been released after Torchwood had eventually confirmed their identity. Unfortunately every available Torchwood car had been somewhere else in London for clean-ups and they had no one to pick them up. After glancing at each others appearances they had quickly decided not to call a taxi but to take the scenic route through the backyards.

The bells of a nearby church chimed six and brought Rose back from the past. Colin was one of the most punctual persons she knew and yet he was nowhere to be seen. Could it be that he had changed his mind? She walked towards the nearby street and glanced around the corner to observe their surroundings. A dark-haired man was running along the street towards the police station. When he got nearer she recognized Colin. He didn't look happy. Not at all.

* * *

This chapter somehow didn't want to be written. I hoped you liked it anyway...


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

A/N: The best laid plans of mice and men... or so they say. This was going to be posted last Sunday - until I detected a major plothole. Anyway, here it is...

* * *

_A dark-haired man was running along the street towards the police station. When he got nearer she recognized Colin. He didn't look happy. Not at all._

Rose stepped out on the pavement and waved her arm. Judging from his expression it wouldn't be wise to shout. She really didn't want any unnecessary attention. Eventually he detected the movement and changed his path slightly in her direction.

A few seconds later he stopped a few feet from her, panting heavily, and glanced around. "I'm not entirely sure but I might have been followed," he said between gasps. "I thought I lost them in Harrod's but I think saw someone who works for Internal Affairs on the Tube when I exited."

Although Rose wondered why anyone would follow Colin she concentrated on the important point. Get rid of potential pursuers. There was time enough to ask questions once they were aboard the TARDIS again.

"Have you got your mobile with you?"

"Of course. Why?"

"They can follow the signal." Although they had chased those aliens together Colin wasn't a field agent. He was brilliant when it came to alien tech and though he was none of the scientists who never left their metaphorical ivory tower he tended to forget what Torchwood was capable of. And following the signal of a simple, not even encrypted, mobile was just children's play.

"Of course, I didn't think."

He pulled his mobile out and gave it to Rose who simply removed the battery and dumped the now useless phone and the battery in two different dust bins. Then she smiled at him, gestured at a red police public call box from the nineteen fifties which blocked the alleyway and asked, "Fancy a trip in a space ship?"

He stared at her disbelievingly, apparently trying to figure out if she'd gone insane.

Rose laughed, then apologized. "I'm sorry, just – you should have seen your face. I think I looked pretty much the same when I saw a TARDIS for the first time. Although I was probably more panicked than surprised. To make a long story short: The red box is a space ship in disguise that's bigger on the inside."

"Bigger on the inside? How does that work?" The scientist in Colin apparently got the upper hand over his surprise again.

Rose cast cautious glances back at the small part of the street that was visible from their position and said, "If you don't mind me answering your questions inside, I think we should leave as soon as possible. I'm quite sure that someone will have noticed the signal of your mobile disappearing."

"Right."

~o~o~o~

Colin followed Rose to the red box and entered after her. She turned around, closed the doors and walked over to the console, giving him the time to take in the huge room with the tree-like support columns and the two other people operating various instruments in a complicated dance, never out of synch, always able to predict what the other one would do next.

"And off we go," exclaimed a man with messy brown hair who was clad in a blue suit while he flipped a lever. A strange whooshing noise sounded and the column in the middle of the console pumped up and down. "Next stop: Harriet Jones."

Eventually Colin was able to form coherent thoughts again. "You're kidding me, right? Harriet Jones?" Of all strange things he had seen in the last few minutes this somehow seemed to be the most unlikely. Aliens were nothing unusual to him anymore. Space ships which were bigger on the inside - there must be some sort of scientific explanation for this. But Harriet Jones involved in this mess as well?

The dark blonde woman with the burgundy-coloured coat took pity on him. "Rose, I think you should explain everything now," she said. "If the Doctor does it..."

"...we might still be standing here next week, I know," Rose gave back, grinning.

"Oi! I'm not that bad. And I'm here as well!"

"Yeah, and if you explain this Colin won't understand anything 'cos you'll just ramble on about time lines, dimensional transcendence and alien refugees at sixty miles per hour." She turned to Colin. "So, introductions first: These are the Doctor and Romanadvoratrelundar, Romana for short." At the disbelieving look the man called the Doctor shot her she just smiled sweetly, "You know, I _can_ remember strange alien names. And it's much easier than Fruluntarladmorenavorsurdared."

"Oh, that's where the plant is from? I was wondering if I'd seen right when she dangled from one of the columns earlier."

"Yes, and her name is Ursula," Colin threw in, having recovered enough from his initial shock to enjoy the interaction of the three others. "She snaps if she's called anything else."

The others continued their banter which gave Colin some time think. Somehow the man Rose had introduced as the Doctor seemed strangely familiar. Where had he seen him? A symposium, he thought. But which topic? Geology? No, physics. Milliseconds later the penny dropped.

"You're John Rutherford!" Colin exclaimed. The brilliant scientist was one of the very few people he truly admired.

The other man nodded, a shadow crossing his face. "I go by that name."

Somehow he didn't seem to be happy to be recognized, like Rose hated being associated only with the Tyler fortune while she rated the work she did at Torchwood so much more important.

"It's not your fault," Rose said, obviously guessing his thoughts. "I think I should start at the beginning." She walked over to the jump seat and began her tale.

~o~o~o~

"So, you're alien," Colin stated after Rose had finished her explanation.

"Yes," confirmed Romana and the Doctor replied at the same time, "Yes, uh, no. Well, you could say it's a bit optional with me." He took a deep breath only to be interrupted by Rose.

"Without going into the really complicated details, you could say he's half human, half Gallifreyan."

"Weeell," the Doctor threw in, "That's a totally oversimplified explanation of one of the most obscure things ever happened, involving a not-regeneration, a severed hand, an old foe, Daleks, one of my never listening companions..." At this point he eventually noticed Colin's confused expression and Rose glaring at him and concluded, "but basically it's true."

"And you are from Rose's original universe?"

"He knew that?" the Doctor asked Rose. She nodded. She had told him ages ago, after they'd been friends for more than two years, just the 'parallel universes' part. The fact that some members of Torchwood had once travelled between universes had been recognized, although it wasn't common knowledge with high-ranking officials. After Jake's death she'd needed someone else she could confide in, someone to talk to about all the differences that still startled her sometimes.

As Rose had a feeling where Colin's next questions would be heading and the Doctor's desire to talk about the destruction of Gallifrey for the second time today seemed to rapidly reach a degree that could be labelled as minus two hundred and seventy three on a scale from zero to ten she quickly changed the topic. "So, here's the plan, then..."

She explained what they were up to while the two others monitored the instruments on the console and eventually initiated the materialization sequence. Harriet had told her that luckily every head of state of the involved countries was already in London for an international conference against poverty. As a hidden agenda was nothing unusual on international conferences none of the significant persons had been really surprised to learn that there would be an additional meeting in the evening although the actual reason was still unknown to them.

"Any questions?"

"Yeah. Why should the president believe that you and I are the negotiation team for Torchwood? That's normally up to Director Gardiner and his minions."

"Fortunately the director chose this afternoon to go on a trip to St. Barts with his latest _assistant_." And it definitely wasn't a business trip. The disgust in her voice was almost palpable. "He won't be available for another four hours. And you know the lot he assigned as deputy directors. They've never been in charge of a torn shoe lace before, let alone an impending invasion. They won't do anything without calling him first. The president will be ever so grateful to see us there, thinking those idiots in charge of the Torchwood tower in a moment of clarity just selected the persons with the greatest experience when it comes to negotiations with aliens and alien tech." Seeing his still not convinced expression, she added, "They're going to believe this. Honestly. Especially because Harriet Jones has already told the president." And with a cheeky grin, "There's even a scientific explanation for that: Humans are thick!"

The Doctor laughed outright at this while he switched the last lever and with a familiar whooshing sound the TARDIS materialized.

"Harriet Jones's apartment, as ordered." He gave Rose a mock salute and opened the door for her.

~o~o~o~

Harriet Jones lived in an apartment in Kensington. Years ago the Doctor had pointed out that the building stood exactly where Kensington Palace would have been in her old universe. Actually, Kensington Palace had existed here as well but had been destroyed by a bomb in a war in the nineteen-twenties. As Britain had suffered a major economic crisis after the war, no one had bothered to rebuild a palace that served no purpose at all, since the monarchy had been abolished at the end of the nineteenth century.

Rose stepped out into Harriet's flat which was decorated with carefully selected furniture. She'd been there on several occasions, either as Torchwood agent or as Vitex representative. She liked the spacious rooms with the high ceilings and the wonderful paintings Harriet had chosen.

As they had agreed with Harriet Rose and Colin would leave the TARDIS here because it would be a tad bit conspicuous if anyone found out that they had arrived at the conference in a mysterious red box with a couple of aliens. Of which Colin had only seen the humanoid looking ones so far. As a non-operative employee of Torchwood he wasn't used to see extraterrestrial life forms of every colour or shape. Therefore everyone would expect some sort of surprise at seeing chameleon-like diplomats. When he admitted that he wasn't an extremely skilled actor either they had decided that it would be best if he didn't see the Foamasi until the conference.

Harriet's acting on the other hand could even put an Oscar winner to shame as you otherwise just couldn't successfully negotiate with certain members of the international community without screaming in frustration, but they had decided not to lose any more time. Thus Colin followed Rose quickly out of the TARDIS and turned around to close the door, only to see it disappearing.

"Rose!" a voice greeted her warmly. "It's good to see you again."

Colin shifted his focus back from the disappearing red box to the woman who stood in the middle of the drawing room. Although she was nearly seventy years old (and some tabloids claimed she'd lied about her age and was already seventy-four) Harriet didn't seem to be one day older than sixty. She was wearing a black skirt and a beige twin set and smiled at Rose warmly.

"Harriet, may I introduce Colin Jordan, head of research at Torchwood?"

The older woman stretched out her hand.

"An honour, Ma'am," Colin said.

"Oh please, don't be so formal." A humorous spark flashed in her eyes. "We're going to trick the President and Torchwood together, so for god's sake stop calling me 'Ma'am'."

"Thank you..." Colin hesitated for a moment, then added, "...Harriet. May I ask you why you do this? Why do you help them?" In an afterthought he clarified, "The Foamasi. Why do you help them?"

The humorous spark was replaced by a 'You really don't want to mess with me' look. "The most important reason is that one of my most reliable sources told me something I didn't want to believe. Unfortunately it was confirmed by Director Gardiner himself." Her face showed only disgust at the mention of his name. Then she asked Colin, "Tell me, did you notice anything strange going on today?"

"Apart from the fact that Rose quit and someone from Internal Affairs quite possibly followed me to a police station in Southwark?"

"That's telling in itself, don't you think?" she gave back and turned to Rose, a dead serious expression on her face. "They haven't informed the President yet. At the moment your public status as Vitex chairwoman protects you. But according to my sources Torchwood is planning to arrest you."


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

"_That's telling in itself, don't you think?" she gave back and turned to Rose, a dead serious expression on her face. "They haven't informed the President yet. At the moment your public status as Vitex chairwoman protects you. But according to my sources Torchwood is planning to arrest you."_

"Why would they do that?" Colin asked, shocked to the core. "Rose is one of their most respected employees."

"I don't know," Harriet gave back, "I was hoping you could answer that."

"They must've found out." Rose said calmly, although she was white as a sheet. "It was bound to happen but I hoped it would take them a bit longer." Until she had managed to disappear and cover her tracks, for example.

"What are you talking about?"

"Have you never noticed anything unusual about me?"

"Apart from that fact that you are the most amazing woman I know? No."

"Great," she said sarcastically. "I could fool the persons I trust, my friends and my family, the persons I should have told in the first place, but I couldn't fool them." Then she added pensively, "But how?" What had given her away? There had been this assignment, about a month ago...

"Rose, I still don't know what you mean," Colin interrupted her thoughts tentatively.

Rose had expected that. He wasn't someone who just stopped asking questions. That made him such a great scientist. And he was right, figuring out how they'd discovered her secret could wait. "I don't age," she said simply, waiting for the meaning to sink in.

Harriet and Colin looked at her in utter astonishment. "You... don't age?" Colin repeated.

Eventually the humour was back. "In the 'I still look twenty-one although I'm already forty' sense of the words, yeah." She grinned. "And believe me: Whatever the tabloids say, it doesn't have anything to do with plastic surgery or something like 'Death Becomes Her'." She had never died, so she didn't know if she was like Jack in that way as well. And she hoped she'd never find out because she had the dim feeling that she wouldn't like the experience. She went on, more seriously, "Anyway, I'll have to deal with that specific problem later. Hopefully they lost us while we were in the Time Vortex." She didn't believe for one second that she got rid of them for good, now she was back on Earth, as she fully knew what Torchwood was capable of, but it would not help to tell Harriet and Colin that right now. She only hoped that she hadn't put them into danger, as well as the Doctor and Romana. And that she could stall Torchwood until she had helped the Foamasi, as she'd promised.

Time to get back on track then, she thought. "Now, what about the conference?"

~o~o~o~

When the door fell shut behind Colin and Rose the Doctor eyed it longingly, wishing Rose hadn't left the TARDIS at Harriet's. For a few short hours it had been like the old times, like it had been before he lost her to this universe for the first time. To be more precise, it had felt like before he had regenerated, like being back in his ninth body, when they'd been friends, before all the white lies had led to so many misunderstandings and missed chances. And he was pretty sure Rose had felt the same. He sighed inwardly, turned around and noticed that Romana had already sent them into the Vortex. She was watching him speculatively, like she'd done several times today, maybe waiting for him to gather his courage to talk to her. After another two minutes and thirty-seven point five seconds she apparently lost her patience. She left her place on the console, walked over to him, put her arms on her hips - why did she look like Jackie when she did that? - glared at him and began:

"As I said before, you're an idiot, Doctor. Just _ask_ me."

"Huh?"

Romana sighed exasperatedly. "You really shouldn't play poker with that face. It's much too obvious what you're thinking." Then she continued gently, "Yes, I'll help you to fix this," and added in a mocking voice, "Mostly, because I like her. But next time you'll have to ask me."

She grinned. He was pretty sure it was because he looked like a deer in the head-lights. Why were women always able to figure him out? Well, apparently all except Sophia who had been much too self-centred to care for anyone else than herself. He still didn't know why he had left the best thing ever happened to him for her.

"Doctor? Doctor!" He suddenly noticed that Romana had tried to get his attention for a whole minute now.

"Uh, sorry." He'd done it again. He really had to get that rambling mind under control. "I think there's only one way to fix this, Romana. We have to get her back to our original universe."

"Really. I would never have thought of that. But you should make sure that she wants it as well, just this once." Ouch. He winced at the sarcasm, although he had to admit that she was right. No more decisions about her life without asking her first.

"Of course," he said. "I've learnt my lesson, Romana."

"Oh, good thing my TARDIS monitors everything that goes on in this room," she grinned. "Otherwise no one would ever believe that you really said that. And all those opportunities for blackmail." Then she continued, "The walls are closed, aren't they?"

"He said he'd make sure of that. And as far as I know me he will have made them as strong as possible. A dimension cannon won't work this time."

"Yes, but he didn't know you would met me." She smiled at him. "So, any ideas?"

Ideas. He ruffled his already messy hair impatiently, pacing the room. Normally his mind produced ideas like a fireworks sparks. Now he somehow seemed to be stuck. Idiot, a harsh Northern voice said in the back of his mind. Great. First insulted by Romana and now by his conscience which apparently liked sounding like his ninth self. On the other hand... A discussion in a closet room in a WW II hospital sprang into his mind.

"Assets. What have we got?"

"Well, there are you, me, a fully equipped TARDIS, Rose, K-9, maybe access to whatever alien tech Torchwood has scavenged. Rose must still have connections inside Torchwood. And on the other side of the void are he and another TARDIS," she hesitated for a moment, then she voiced her suspicion, "that you and Rose should share a connection with."

Good. This list was considerably longer than it had been when they visited 1941. Although he doubted that they would be able to use whatever tech Torchwood had gathered. He was certain that Rose's 'lab rat' comment wasn't completely unfounded. Then his mind eventually registered Romana's final words.

"Rose? Why should Rose..." Oh. But Romana was quicker.

"She looked into the heart of your TARDIS. It's more than likely that they're bounded somehow. Did you ever notice that she and the TARDIS interacted differently?"

Now he came to think of it... The TARDIS seemed to respond better to her than to any other companion he ever had, and that included Romana. And that meant...

"Oh, yes! That's brilliant!" he exclaimed, bouncing on the tips of his toes. "We just do it the old-fashioned way!" He beamed at Romana, who smiled as well. "We just have to reconfigure the temporal and spacial..."

They were interrupted when Mala suddenly appeared in the console room. "Romana, I'm tired," she said, rubbing her eyes with her fists. "When are we there?"

"Just a few more minutes, darling," the Time Lady responded. "You and I'll go and get your Dad and the other officers and in the meantime the Doctor lands the TARDIS." She reached for Mala's hand.

"Let her stay, she can help me," the Doctor said, fully knowing what Romana was doing, what she and Rose had done before. She was giving him time with her TARDIS. He couldn't even begin to explain how thankful he was for that chance. It was a bit like having his own TARDIS back. "It's more fun with two."

He grinned manically and Romana quickly left the console room and headed for the galley, while Mala beamed at the Doctor like a child at Christmas, her tiredness forgotten. "I can help you? Really?"

"Yes, of course. Can you hold that lever down? The one next to the row of red buttons." He turned a dial, pressed a button and initiated the materialization sequence.

~o~o~o~

A black limousine navigated through the traffic, heading north towards the M1, carefully avoiding the streets that were blocked in the rush hour. As they didn't want to draw any unnecessary attention Harriet had neglected the usual escort and just held out her car keys. This had led to a polite argument between Rose and Colin who had both offered to drive. Colin had won, so Rose entered the fond with Harriet. She stared out of the window, not even registering her surroundings, and thought about the conference ahead. No need to deal with Torchwood's threat just yet, she had decided even before they had left the flat. She couldn't do anything about it at the moment and there were more important things to consider right now. Always one problem at a time.

She was sometimes still surprised how different some of the countries had developed in this universe. Some of the African states that belonged to the poorest in her old universe had made good use of their raw materials here and now were some of the wealthiest and most influential ones on the planet. Others, like Spain, didn't even exist. Spain was divided in two countries here, Catalonia and Aragon, which had fought about regional water reserves in numerous wars. Although they had reached a truce and eventually signed a peace treaty many years ago and both countries were members of this version of the European Union they still hadn't recovered from the damages war had done to their economies. Therefore they largely depended on EU funding. Geopolitics could still give her a major headache.

Thankfully all countries that would be necessary to her plan were present at the conference. It was held at a small estate about thirty miles north of London that the government used regularly for similar purposes. The estate was located in the middle of a large forest that mostly belonged to the National Trust, surrounded by large gardens and could only be reached by two narrow streets. This made it easy to shield the place against any unwanted intruders. Except against intruders who had a phone box-shaped time ship at their disposal. Rose grinned at the thought. She had visited the estate a couple of times during Harriet Jones's presidency to report on some or another case in which the president took special interest, therefore she knew the premises quite well. The main house contained the larger conference rooms, the official dining room and representative bedrooms or even suites for the heads of state while their respective staffs were accommodated in more plain rooms in the annexes. She'd always adored the main staircase which reminded her strongly of the Gryffindor tower in the Harry Potter movies. Every time she saw it she expected the stairs to change their directions, the paintings to move and the statues come to life.

This time, though, they would avoid the main house at all, conferring with the politicians secretly in one of the rooms that were normally reserved for one of the sub-committees where the real work was done. As Harriet had agreed with the president she would arrive after dinner for 'informal consultations' as it would have been highly suspicious if she just appeared out of nowhere. Because Harriet had already spoken with those who would participate in the negotiations with the Foamasi, all that was left to do was to inform everyone where to meet. James Sutton, her personal assistant, had already been on his way to the estate to take care of this, when Rose and Colin had left the TARDIS.

One hour after they had left Kensington they eventually arrived at the estate, stopped in front of an iron-cast gate and were greeted by a guard. "Your identification, please," he asked politely.

Colin flashed his Torchwood ID, Harriet showed her passport and Rose opened a leather wallet with a sheet of slightly psychic paper she had borrowed from Romana earlier as she had had to give her ID back when she left the Torchwood tower for the last time - had it only been this morning? Fortunately neither she nor Mickey had ever told anybody in this universe about the existence of this incredibly useful gadget, so the soldier just checked the picture, opened the gates that led to the main court and said, "Someone is going to meet you at the side entrance."

"Thank you," Colin gave back, started the motor and drove through the gate, parked the car and opened the door for Harriet. She got out, followed by Rose and the small group walked over to the side entrance where James Sutton waited for them.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

Sorry about the delay. This chapter tried to drive me crazy. And I'm still not sure if it didn't succeed at last...

* * *

"_Thank you," Colin gave back, started the motor and drove through the gate, parked the car and opened the door for Harriet. She got out, followed by Rose, and the small group walked over to the side entrance where James Sutton waited for them._

~o~o~o~

With Harriet's vast experience on international conferences they had easily agreed to meet with the heads of state after dinner. No one would be surprised to see small groups of diplomats gather for informal discussions, that was just normal procedure when it came to international politics. So the TARDIS eventually appeared out of thin air next to a moonlit garden shed, disturbing early brown leaves on the soil that the gardeners had not yet taken care of. The doors opened and Romana stepped out, followed by the Doctor and the Foamasi delegation. As Mala was dead on her feet the TARDIS had provided her with a small bed in the room she had played in earlier and the ship had also promised to babysit her.

"The dematerialisation felt strange this time. Don't you think, Doctor?" Romana asked while she took in their surroundings, trying to find out where exactly they had landed.

"What?"

"When we dropped off Rose and Colin," the Time Lady elaborated.

"Romana, I still don't know what you're talking about," the Doctor replied exasperatedly. He thought back but couldn't remember anything special.

"Well, when I brought her back into the Vortex the TARDIS felt as if she didn't want to leave them," she explained, having discovered a path leading in the direction of the main house.

A feeling he only knew too well. But no, he hadn't felt anything like that. Although he might have been occupied with his own thoughts at that moment and then with figuring out a way to cross the Void.

"Why?"

"I don't know. It just seemed she didn't want to leave them behind. At first she didn't want to dematerialize."

A dreadful memory sprang into his mind. The last time his TARDIS didn't want to do something, more specifically, landing somewhere with Rose on board, had been Krop Tor. And he had nearly lost her there. And now Romana's ship hadn't wanted to leave her alone. That couldn't be good.

The group surrounded a small glass house on their way to the main complex. Rose had explained the layout of the estate in detail, so the Doctor and Romana knew where they would meet their contact person. When they approached a sunken stone garden they had agreed on as meeting point they were greeted by a young man with blonde hair in an expensive suit who introduced himself as "James Sutton, personal assistant to Harriet Jones."

If Harriet's assistant was astounded to see humans accompanied by a couple of chameleon-like creatures he didn't show it. But perhaps that did happen more often than he knew about, the Doctor thought. After splitting up with Rose the only contact person he had left in Torchwood had been Jake. Every couple of weeks they had exchanged e-mails, mostly to keep in touch, sometimes to swap information, although Jake had always kept him informed on Rose, sensing that was one of the Doctor's intentions. Jake had never so much as hinted that Rose knew about their e-mail conversation but he was pretty sure Jake had told her. Rose might have been mad at him or disappointed but she was professional enough to use a resource when she could.

"I'm Professor John Rutherford," the Doctor answered, deliberately using his human alias, "and this is Romana, uh, Smith," he carefully avoided to mention her origin and quickly added a surname, not certain if James was trustworthy, "and Commander Vaesite and his staff." Hiding their extra-terrestrial nature was pointless, he decided, although he didn't want to take any risks with Romana's identity. Something was going on, he was certain of it. Better to keep everyone in the dark for a bit.

"The former president, Harriet Jones, and Ms Tyler and Mr Jordan, who both represent Torchwood, expect you in the Blue Drawing Room, Ma'am, Sirs." He nodded politely at them. "The heads of state of Algeria, Mali and Morocco, as well as the President of Great Britain, will join you shortly after dinner," the assistant said. "If you would follow me around the building, we're going to use the entrance of the orangery."

The small group followed James through several gardens, each with a different layout. The TARDIS obviously had materialized in a more natural part with large red cedars and pine trees. A small doorway in a hedgerow led to a rosarium which opened up to a lawn. James crossed it and led them along the rear facade of the main house to a small entrance in an annex.

"This is the orangery," he said, opened the heavy wooden door and continued his way through a hallway, followed by the Doctor and the Foamasi delegation, Romana taking the rear position. Eventually he halted at a richly ornated door and opened it, then he stepped aside and said, "The Blue Drawing Room, ma'am, sirs."

~o~o~o~

James had led Harriet, Rose and Colin to the Blue Drawing Room which usually was used for informal meetings during conferences. Harriet set down in a comfortable armchair next to the fireplace which only served decorative purposes while Colin selected a chair at the conference table.

Rose walked over to one of the windows and stared into the growing darkness, lost in thoughts. For the second time in her life she was going to lose everything, after leaving behind her old universe involuntarily. After he had stranded her here for the second time it hadn't been that worse because she still had her job and her family and friends. But both were gone now. In most cases thanks to Torchwood. Again. History apparently repeated itself. How they'd found out wasn't important. Not really. More important was what she was going to do now, after she'd sorted the Foamasi incident. Staying in this country wasn't really an option, even this planet was risky. She was much too well-known for that. And there was only so much she could change about her outward appearance. Maybe she could hitch a ride with Romana? Great, she thought sarcastically. Now she was inviting herself on a trip in a time ship. Although, now that Romana was here there might even be a possibility to...

'Stop it!' she told herself. Down that road lay only the hopeless state she had found herself in after being stranded here for the first time. And she really didn't want to repeat that experience. She had rebuilt her life from the scratch once and she could do it again.

When she heard a polite knock on the door she stayed still for a few more seconds to pull herself together, then she turned around and faced the new arrivals. Following an aide who began to set up beverages on a table at the side of the room, four people entered. One of them was the President of the People's Republic of Great Britain, Stephen Connors, and one of the others, a woman with jet black hair, Rose recognized as Mounhira Naybet, newly elected prime minister of Morocco. She had met her years ago on a Torchwood mission, when she herself was just a field operative and the other woman was one of the leading scientists of her country. The others had to be the presidents of Mali and Algeria.

President Connors walked over to Harriet and greeted his predecessor politely. "Harriet, may I introduce Prime Minister Naybet of Morocco and President Oudjani of Algeria? And of course you know President Coulibaly of Mali." Harriet smiled at them and shook hands with each of them. Rose admired her for her acting skills as she knew very well that Harriet's last encounter with Amadou Coulibaly had been less than friendly. His acting was apparently not as good as Harriet's because she could see him narrow his eyes to hide a glare. He was going to be a problem, Rose decided. The president then introduced Rose and Colin, for a second stumbling over his name.

Mounhira Naybet walked over to Rose and said, "Nice to see you again, Agent Tyler. It's been a long time."

"That's true, ma'am. Congratulations."

"Thank you. I'm still not completely used to it," the other woman admitted. "So, what are we here for? Harriet Jones was exceptionally close-mouthed about the meeting."

Harriet Jones cut in, having overheard their conversation, "I didn't want to talk about this over official communication channels. Oh, and please take a seat at the conference table. This is going to take us some time." She walked over to the small side of the table facing the fireplace and sat down; President Connors took the place at her right, followed by Mounhira Naybet, while the others sat at her left. Rose remained standing. She had discovered over the years that she could organize her thoughts much better if she moved around.

When everyone had settled down, Harriet continued, "Rose, could you please give everyone an overview of the current situation?"

"Of course, ma'am," Rose agreed. "In the last few hours we were contacted by an alien race called Foamasi who threatened to invade Earth." She heard a few gasps but went on, "My team and I discovered that they had lost their planet in a war. About fifty thousand survivors are onboard an entire fleet of heavily armed alien ships."

"And what are you going to do about this threat?" Samir Oudjani, the President of Algeria wanted to know.

"Sir, we contacted them and persuaded them that negotiations would be a better means of reaching their goals."

With a polite knock on the door an aide to President Connors entered the room. He walked over to his boss and whispered something in his ear. The President immediately got up and followed him.

"I see," Amadou Coulibaly sneered. "You basically invited them to invade."

"No, Sir, I didn't. You really should know us better than that." Indeed, he should. Torchwood had saved Mali from a nasty infestation of a bunch of twenty foot long, extremely venomous desert vipers from the planet Eryx who had planned to use the country as a hunting ground. Her team'd had no choice than to kill all of them. And that specific mission was one of the reasons Harriet Jones and President Coulibaly weren't exactly on best terms with each other. To be honest, the man couldn't stand her as well, just because she had saved his life and had proven his life guard totally incompetent in dealing with alien invasions. "Actually we have an idea how to deal with this of which both parties could benefit. According to one of our counsellors they are much more resilient to ionizing radiation than humans. This should also give you an answer to the question why you are here."

The Presidents of Mali and Algeria looked slightly confused while Mounhira Naybet commented, "That's brilliant. They could inhabit the contaminated parts of our deserts."

The door opened again and President Connors returned. He swiped the room with his eyes, his gaze lingering a few moments on Rose, before he sat down again next to Harriet, casting glances at the door every few seconds.

"Exactly," Rose said.

President Oudjani interrupted, "And why should we let them do that? They're aliens. They could be dangerous to our people."

That was only to be expected, Rose thought, even from people who should know better. Mali had been one of the poorest countries in her old universe and was much better off here but during a famine eight years ago many of his people had sought refuge in neighbour countries. At that time its neighbours hadn't been exactly happy with the situation as well. She took a deep breath to remain calm.

"In return you could negotiate access to their technology which according to my information gives them the opportunity to inhabit places that would be averse to any kind of life otherwise. This could be one step to the solution of our population growth problem."

"I see," Prime Minister Naybet said. "And are we to expect them here?"

"Yes, they have landed by now and are on their way," Rose said. She wasn't certain how she knew that but she felt it was true.

Someone knocked on the door and everyone looked up expectantly as it opened and revealed James Sutton announcing the arrival of the Foamasi delegation. Rose's gaze fell on President Connors and for a split second he looked disappointed. Then the expression was gone and he got up to greet the group politely.

~o~o~o~

"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen," James Sutton said, "the delegation has arrived."

Apparently dinner had ended early today, so everyone else had already met, the Doctor saw. He recognized President Connors who got up to welcome them. He got a look at Rose who leant nonchalantly against the mantelpiece of an unlit fireplace. He saw her eyes lit up when her gaze fell on him, giving away that she was happy to see him, although she otherwise kept her expression strictly under control.

After the introductions were made the president asked, "So, Professor, how do you come in here?"

Professor. He thought he'd gotten used to being called that without being reminded of Ace but he was wrong. He rubbed the back of his neck. "Weeell, I really don't want to be rude..." His glance fell on Rose who had to stifle a laugh at this. "...but apparently your staff lacks basic research abilities. Otherwise they'd have told you that I worked for Torchwood for some time. Never really liked their methods, though. Too much 'Shoot first, ask later'." He stared intently at Rose, indicating that he'd started the act, hoping she would play along.

She understood and gave back, disgust in her voice, "You've always been too weak, John. A coward, any day." Ouch. That hurt. Although her eyes told him she didn't mean it that way.

His next words came with as much venom as he could muster: "You never think first, you just act. I was right about you the first time we met your father. You're just a stupid ape." He saw her flinch at his words and desperately hoped she knew he didn't mean them. Judging by the way the other persons in the room stared at them they were obviously convinced that Rose and he would never lend each other an used tissue, let alone work together on anything, despite their common, and relatively well-known, public history.

Romana who apparently had decided to join the act, interrupted the slightly awkward silence that had followed his last, decidedly undiplomatic, words. "John, please, can we leave the domestics at home?"

When he looked at Rose again he saw with relief that her brown eyes sparkled with mirth. Quite possibly she wasn't going to kill him, then.

Before anyone else could say something Harriet Jones took the initiative and said, "Well, after this enlightening exchange of words I'd like to suggest we discuss the matter we are here for."

With relief everyone took a seat, Harriet again at the top, the Foamasi, accompanied by the Doctor and Romana on her left and the others on her right. Harriet's assistant took a seat on a small table that was place under one of the windows and prepared to take notes.

~o~o~o~

Two hours later, the clock slowly nearing midnight, Harriet Jones asked, "Have we reached an agreement?"

Both sides nodded their approval.

"Then my assistant will prepare the contract for signature."

While James got up to gather his papers the doors of the conference room burst open. The assistant turned around, his face white, and several sheets escaped his grip and fell to the floor. A group of men clad in combat gear marked with Torchwood symbols walked in.

"Rose Tyler?" the man in front asked.

Rose straightened herself and got up. She was fairly certain what this was about. "That's me." She didn't recognize him but even Director Gardiner wouldn't be so stupid to let her arrest by someone she'd trained herself. She continued, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Ms Tyler, you are arrested according to Article 73 of the Torchwood Charter."

* * *

In case you were wondering: the estate is based on a real place in the UK, thus my sudden ability for descriptions ;-) Oh, and of course I know that Morocco is a constitutional monarchy, therefore the head of state would normally be the king. But they've got a prime minister who's the head of government.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

"_Ms Tyler, you are arrested according to Article 73 of the Torchwood Charter."_

She heard a few gasps but did not react. After what Harriet had told her a few hours ago this was only to be expected. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the expressionless face of President Connors. So that was why he had looked at the door every few minutes. He had known something. Harriet's assistant looked shell-shocked. He stood next to his chair, still holding a few sheets of paper in his left, his knuckles white. A short glance at Harriet told her that the former president hadn't expected this so soon. Romana's face was white while the Doctor stared at the President with an expression of sheer disgust. He obviously had suspected something was going on and had noticed the President glancing at the door as well. The expressions of the other humans ranged from utter disbelief to shock while the Foamasi were harder to read. But Rose was certain that they felt the same.

"And who do I have the honour with?" Rose asked, for a moment ignoring his statement, her tone indicating that this was an order of a high-ranking Torchwood official, not a question. She needed a plan.

The man had obviously been selected well. It was standard Torchwood strategy not to reveal names to people who were to arrest. Therefore he just ignored her question and read her her rights. The litany was short. If Torchwood arrested someone the suspect could demand a duty solicitor and a trial. But that was that. The right to an unharmed body was not on the list. Neither for aliens nor for humans. Rose had always hated that fact. Although she suspected some of her colleagues actually enjoyed that their prisoners had only limited rights.

She needed more time. And to be honest, she was curious with what excuse they'd come up to arrest her. So she looked straight into the eyes of the nameless Torchwood agent and asked, "And what does Article 73 say?" She'd skimmed the Charter, of course, but she had mostly ignored the boring stuff that tended to be at the end of official documents.

"You removed Torchwood property from the archives without permission. This is liable to prosecution. It's your choice. You can come along willingly or we will use force."

Rose laughed outright at this. Bureaucracy at its best. Of all things they had chosen the stupid files. "I really wished people would get more creative with their threats," she sighed, not for the first time today. She looked around and her glance momentarily stopped at the bookshelf next to the fireplace. Then she gazed intently at the Doctor, who winked at her almost undetectably. He would play along, no matter what. With her eyes she indicated in the direction of the shelf. He closed his eyes for a split second in affirmation.

The Torchwood agent nodded at two of his subordinates. "Restrain her."

The two agents, a man with Asian features and a stunningly beautiful woman with ginger hair and green eyes, who could have been a top model in another life, saluted and walked around the table while the Doctor got up as well and glared at the team leader, the Oncoming Storm in his eyes.

"It's not as if I liked her very much after she dumped me." He winked at Rose, telling her wordlessly that he was trying to distract them. "But _files_? You're arresting _Rose Tyler_ because of some _files_?" He made a step in the direction of the Torchwood agent. Everyone else on the conference table seemed to be too shocked to say something.

"Sir, please stay where you are. If you interfere we will have to arrest you as well," the team leader said, although his body language told Rose that he would rather have retreated a few steps than being confronted by the Doctor's glare any longer if it hadn't been for their audience.

"Oh, I'm really looking forward to see how you're gonna do that." He smiled at Rose brilliantly and shouted, "Run!"

She grinned back and shoved her chair in the direction of the two Torchwood agents coming after her. Then she turned abruptly and ran towards the bookshelf, the Doctor mirroring every move on the other side of the table.

"Romana," the Doctor called.

"Coming," the other woman answered, effectively blocking the way of their pursuers with every available piece of furniture while Rose pulled on a book on the shelf and opened a secret door. Although the estate wasn't as old as it looked and had been rebuilt from the scratch in the early nineteenth century the former owners hadn't been able to resist and built a secret door in a bookshelf. Lots of people knew about it but Torchwood had obviously missed the fact.

Or not. Five additional Torchwood agents awaited them in the adjacent room. She looked at the Doctor who just grinned and grabbed her hand. She smiled back and together they did what they did best. They ran. Dodged people who wanted to catch them and made a beeline towards a glass door leading to the gardens, followed by Romana who had quickly sonicked the secret door shut. She could hear a lot of shouting and banging that stopped a second later when she heard a male voice shouting an order and heavy-booted feet began to move. Over this noise raised a female voice, demanding answers. Harriet. She pushed every thought of what might happen in the other room from her mind and concentrated on her surroundings, just in time to avoid stumbling down a few steps which led to another part of the garden.

"TARDIS!" she gasped.

"That way." The Doctor tugged at her arm and directed them towards a small path, nearly invisible in the darkness. He sounded breathless as well. Not much running for his life in the last few years, she guessed. And no respiratory bypass system for him.

"What are you planning?" Romana asked from behind.

"In one of the files I've got some sort of life insurance." The disgust in her voice as she said the last two words was nearly palpable. "I didn't want to use it but now I don't have a choice if I want to keep everyone safe." The Doctor and Romana stared at her.

She grinned mirthlessly. "Old-fashioned blackmail. I'll explain everything in the TARDIS. Now run!"

Within two more minutes, during which the shouts behind them never got much louder or lower, they reached the TARDIS and Romana opened the door. The three of them stumbled inside breathlessly and the Doctor shoved the door shut.

After taking a few moments to catch his breath the Doctor asked, "What exactly are you gonna do?"

"A few weeks ago I stumbled across evidence linking Director Gardiner with organized crime. It isn't enough to charge him, not even to remove him from his post, but it would definitely lead to several unpleasant questions if the tabloids got a hold of it. And that would bring out his numerous affairs as well. I know his wife. She's the chairwoman of an important committee within the government. She tolerates it as long as no one knows about it because a divorce would be bad for her career as well but she would have his head if it ever came out."

"So, are you going to tell his wife or the press?" Romana wanted to know.

"I'm going to tell _him_," Rose said. "He's the only one who can withdraw the arrest team. But I'll make it very clear that I don't have any scruples to do more than that." Her voice was hard. And a really nice side effect of the Director admitting a mistake would be that his reputation would lose a bit of its shine as well.

Romana nodded. "I can't say I totally agree with you, but it's probably for the best. Every species coming to this planet needs protection, including the Foamasi, and if the only way we can have that at the moment is by blackmail... You said he was on St. Barts?"

"Yeah, and if I should guess I'd say we're gonna find him in the best hotel on the island."

"I'll set the coordinates," Romana said calmly. Without a word the Doctor went over to the console to help her. Rose only blinked in surprise, having expected him arguing.

~o~o~o~

While he mechanically stabilized their flight path the Doctor was lost in thoughts. Davros had been right in a way. He changed people, and not always for the better. The Rose he had met twenty years ago wouldn't have thought about blackmailing anyone, and Romana would never have helped her. The Time Lord version of himself would be furious, and more so if he knew he was helping them. But if he was honest, he'd always thought that the other him was a bit of a hypocrite. He had single-handed destroyed more than one species, including the Daleks. So had Rose. And he couldn't recall him yelling at _her_ for that. He would prefer if there was another way, but he couldn't see it. And even if they solved this, there would be a next time. Someone would find out about Rose again. There couldn't be any other reason for this ridiculous attempt to arrest her. The plain truth was that she wasn't safe on this planet any more.

"I'll check on Mala," Rose said, interrupting his thoughts. He'd completely forgotten that the Foamasi girl was still on board. She continued, "And afterwards I think I'll take a nap. I'm completely knackered, now the adrenalin is wearing off." She was right, he thought. It was a sensible thing to do as it would take them more than an hour to get to their destination, although they planned on landing at the exact minute they'd left the estate.

"There's an unused bedroom next to Mala's. It has got an en suite as well," Romana offered while she adjusted one of the dials on the console that controlled the temporal flux.

"Thanks." Rose stifled a yawn and left the room.

The second she vanished Romana shot him a curious look.

"What?"

"I would have expected you yelling at us."

"I thought so. But I'm not him. I have accepted long ago that there are certain things that won't go away just by wishful thinking. Like you, I'm not exactly happy with the situation but we don't have a choice if we want to save Rose and the Foamasi. If this was only about Rose things maybe would be different but there's more at stake. If they discredit her the negotiation will be null and void." He grinned. "Although I had a lot of fun being the good cop I don't want to repeat this experience anytime soon."

Romana laughed. "Rose was really good as bad cop as well. I nearly bought her performance myself. And Commander Vaesite seemed to have discovered my movie collection. He would be an extremely convincing Blofield, even without the cat."

"James Bond?" the Doctor asked incredulously. "Are you serious?"

She smirked. "If you don't tell anyone about my James Bond collection I won't tell anyone that _you_ are addicted to the 51st century remake of EastEnders."

"But that's a classic!"

Romana hummed non-committally and changed the topic. "Now, what about our other problem? We still have to counter totally different laws of physics here."

The Doctor grinned suddenly. "Good thing I had a bit of practice with K-9, isn't it?"

"Let's have a look at the schematics then," Romana gave in. "No way I let you tinker with _my_ TARDIS without us both knowing and _agreeing_ on what you're doing. Especially not when we're in the Time Vortex. I don't want to end up in E-space again."

~o~o~o~

About an hour later Rose reappeared in the console room, still clad in her business suit, but freshly showered, and discovered the Doctor and Romana staring at a monitor filled with lines which looked like electric circuits. They were discussing something in Gallifreyan.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"Not exactly, no," the Doctor answered. "We're almost there."

Although Romana looked pointedly at him he didn't elaborate further. Rose sighed inwardly. Typical. She would find out sooner or later, she decided and said, "Mala is still asleep. I don't think she'll wake in the next hour. But we don't have much time. The Director has to call the teams back before they realize that we're gone."

Romana nodded, initiated the materialization sequence and landed a certain sentient time ship on a sunny beach on St. Barts, in the shadow of a group of palm trees, only slightly disturbing their leaves.

"Right," Rose said and opened the doors, her jaw set, "I'll be back soon."

"Oi! Where do you think you're going?" the Doctor asked, still standing at the console, and Rose stopped in her tracks.

"Find Director Gardiner, of course," she answered, without turning around.

He came over, grabbed her hand and smiled at her. "Do you really think we'll let you do this alone?"

"Besides, we'll be much quicker at covering the grounds if we work together," Romana added.

"Oh, I don't think we'll have to search for him," Rose grinned. "I'll just ask at the reception." She waved Romana's psychic paper. "I'm a Torchwood agent delivering news on impending doom. Do you really think they're not going to tell me where he is if the whole planet is threatened?"

She winked at them and walked out of the TARDIS, the Doctor and Romana following her. Outside she stopped and took in her surroundings. She was standing on a beach with white sand, the azure sea on her left and a hotel resort with separate bungalows serving as guest houses on her right. Quickly she identified what looked like the main building and walked in its direction, only momentarily stopped by a large swimming pool blocking her way.

She guessed it was nearly eight p.m. here so most of the guests would be preparing for dinner right now. Chances were that the Director would be in his suite as well. She went to the reception desk and asked the clerk, her attitude screaming important business, "Mr Gardiner's suite?"

He took in her appearance. "We can't give room numbers to visitors without prior notice, I'm afraid, ma'am."

Rose flashed her psychic paper. "I'm Torchwood agent Diana Goddard, Mr..." she glanced at his name tag, "...Collins. I have to inform the Director about a matter of highest importance. Top secret. Nothing of this can be relayed over normal communication channels. Otherwise I would just have called him. I've got more important things to do than to spend my time in zeppelins. So would you please give me his room number?"

"But my superiors..."

She smiled at him. "If you won't tell him no one will."

Her sudden change of moods seemed to have overwhelmed him. Another glance at his tag. "Tom..." she pleaded, accompanied by another brilliant smile.

The clerk relented, typed a few commands on his keyboard and said, "Suite seven. That would be the yellow guest house next to the pool."

"Thank you, Tom." With another smile she turned around and nodded at the Doctor and Romana to follow her.

"Diana Goddard?" the Doctor asked.

"Yeah, in this universe she works for Torchwood. She's a high ranking agent with Torchwood US, so even if the clerk calls the Director he won't be too surprised to hear her name."

Within two more minutes they reached the guest house. Rose knocked politely on the wooden door. A male voice answered.

"Who is there?"

"Agent Diana Goddard," Rose answered with a remarkably convincing American accent. "I've got important news."

"Wait a second," she heard, followed by an exchange of hissed words behind the door. Then footsteps neared the door and it opened to reveal Lawrence Gardiner, director of Torchwood. He was nearly six foot tall, weighed about twenty stone and stared at her as if he had seen a ghost. "You!"


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23**

"_Wait a second," she heard, followed by an exchange of hissed words behind the door. Then footsteps neared the door and it opened to reveal Lawrence Gardiner, director of Torchwood. He was nearly six foot tall, weighed about twenty stone and stared at her as if he had seen a ghost. "You!"_

"Yeah, me," Rose said briskly. "I don't have much time so let's just assume you asked me how I got here and I told you that this was none of your business. And as I'm fairly certain you don't want to discuss the matter I'm here for in public let's further assume you asked us to come in." Her voice was dripping with sarcasm.

When he didn't move Romana took the initiative and just walked through the door into what seemed to be the living area of the guest house. The Doctor grinned at Rose and they each grabbed one of Director Gardiner's elbows, turned him around and shoved him inside. That brought him back to his senses.

"That's rude," he complained.

"Yep, that's me. How come they all say that?" he asked and looked at Rose questioningly. She just laughed and glanced around. The room was dark as the shutters were closed but she noticed a half-open door leading to a bedroom and a second door in a corner.

"Nice room," she said. "Unfortunately my expenses wouldn't cover that. And alien invasions don't exactly take place in the Caribbean."

The Doctor grinned. "Ever wondered where Bob Marley _really_ is from?"

"Oh, you're kidding me!"

"Am I?"

Romana looked at them and raised an eyebrow. "I thought we had some important business?" she asked mockingly.

"Thanks for reminding me," Rose replied, still smiling, but she became serious again in an instant. "As I said before, I'm busy. Therefore let's just skip introductions and small talk and get to the point," she continued. "I want you to call back the teams that have order to arrest me."

Director Gardiner feigned ignorance. "Someone is trying to arrest you? But what for?"

"Oh please. You don't expect me to believe you don't know about that, do you?"

"I guess he does," Romana said.

"Why should someone try to arrest you?" the Director repeated, ignoring Romana's comment. "You're one of Torchwood's most trusted agents," he tried again.

"Oh, don't give me that. I don't have time for this!" Rose exclaimed exasperatedly. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. And as for the reason why you should call the teams back: Last month I stumbled across evidence linking you with organized crime. Are you willing to take the risk what the press would make of this? Oh, and of course, they'd find out about your affairs."

"I really don't know what you mean. You're insane. All of you!"

"He _does_ think we're stupid," the Doctor confirmed sarcastically, not even wincing at being called insane.

Rose shrugged. "He had his chance," she said matter-of-factly. "In one hour every press agency on this planet will have copies of photos of him playing golf with some of the heads of organized crime. And, just because I'm such a generous person, I'll add a few lovely pictures of him with his assistants in his office. I wonder what Mrs Gardiner will say when she sees the press review tomorrow morning. Wait, no, let's make that..." she glanced at her watch, "...today, in about five hours?"

The Director was white as a sheet. Some of her last words seemed to have shattered his indifference. "P-pictures?" he stuttered. "In my office?"

Now it was Rose's turn to feign astonishment when she replied innocently, "Oh, so no one ever told you that there are cameras in every office?" Then her voice became icy. "This is Torchwood. We are the first line of defence against aliens. So of course we installed cameras in case a shapeshifter or something similarly nasty tried to take over the organization." Then she grinned mirthlessly. "As one of my friends programmed the whole thing I knew where to look. Call it my life insurance. And apparently I needed it."

She paused a few seconds, waiting for the message to sink in, and continued with a straight look into his eyes, "It's your decision. You can call the teams back and stay where you are or you can face a public scandal. Oh, and don't make this about me. I was going to retreat from public life anyway. Now I'm just doing it a bit more thorough. So don't threaten me with telling everyone that I'm an alien or whatever crosses your mind. That threat has never worked before and it certainly never will. And when you consider your options you should imagine what a pain in your backside I'd be if you _really_ annoy me."

The Doctor and Romana shared incredulous glances at her tirade. Director Gardiner was silent for what seemed a long time but lasted only a few moments.

"Okay," he said eventually. "I'll make the call." He reached for his mobile on a nearby table and dialled a number. Just before he could hit the button that would make the connection Rose interrupted him.

"Wait. Let me see the number." He turned the phone so she could see the screen and she nodded. He had dialled the number of Torchwood's communication centre which held contact with all agents out on a mission. At her confirmation he pressed the button and she could hear the familiar ring tone on the other end. Ten seconds later the call was answered by an anonymous Torchwood employee, and the Director asked to be put through to Agent Johns. Then a voice came through the speaker that had read her her rights one hour ago and thousands of miles further in the east.

"Johns."

"This is Director Gardiner. Abort the mission immediately. Miss Tyler is not to be touched under any circumstances. Confirm."

"Understood, Sir. We abort the mission." Well-trained, as she had thought earlier. But he seemed to lack imagination, Rose decided. A good agent followed orders; a fantastic agent used his head.

The Director hung up. "Satisfied?" he asked acridly.

"Not quite," the Doctor said. "We want that in writing as well. We have no reason to trust your organization as far as we can throw you." He grinned. "And as I appear to be a bit skinny this time around..."

The Director hesitated. Rose cast the Doctor a short glance. He had apparently suspected some sort of cheat and it seemed he had been right.

Romana grinned, having seen through the director's intentions as well. "Wait, you're not going to tell us you don't have any official stationary here, are you?"

"Oh, I'm fairly certain he was," Rose gave back, and then she turned to Director Gardiner again. "Spare your breath. I'm sure your assistant has got a notebook and a printer somewhere, as this is supposed to look like a business trip."

He still seemed indecisive.

Rose shook her head, digging her nails in her palms in an attempt to remain calm, but not able to fully contain her raising anger. "I don't care if you're cheating on your wife with a man or a woman this time. Your sexual orientation is none of my business. But I can't stand liars."

The director looked shocked.

"Well, you're not exactly discreet about it. Especially not when you dump them."

"I'd do what she said," the Doctor advised him. "You never want to stand in the way of a furious Tyler woman. And I speak out of experience." He unconsciously rubbed his cheek.

"Oh, well," Rose said when the director didn't react. She was quickly losing her patience. She walked over to the door in the corner of the room and opened it to reveal a small study. Inside a woman clad in a light summer dress was sitting on a desk and stared at her in surprise. Judging from the look of her face she had been doing her make-up when Rose had knocked and therefore was looking a bit deranged at the moment.

Rose recognized her. "Andrea, isn't it?" The woman nodded, still recovering from her state of shock.

"I'm fairly certain you heard nearly everything we talked about next door. So would you be able to prepare a document that declares us," her gesture included the Doctor and Romana, "safe from every form of prosecution by Torchwood, its allies and possible legal successors?" She thought for a moment. "Oh, and we should include the Foamasi as well."

Without a word Andrea opened her briefcase, pulled out a laptop and booted the system. A few minutes later she had typed up the document according to Rose's outlines, with several additions thrown in by the Doctor and Romana.

"I'm going to need names," she finally said.

"John Rutherford and Romana Smith," Rose supplied.

After a few more seconds Andrea read the document out and Rose said, "That should do. Would you please print it out?"

The assistant connected her notebook with a mini-printer and seconds later the final version of the document lay in front of them.

Rose shoved the sheets in Director Gardiner's direction. "Will you sign this without any further ado or do we have to go through the whole discussion again?" she asked with as much patience as she could muster.

Still reluctant, the Director took the pen Andrea held out and signed the paper.

"That it?" he asked acridly. "Or do you want me to sign over my immortal soul as well?"

Without a look in his direction Rose pocketed the document and turned to Andrea. "Do you mind if I give you a word of advice?" she asked. The other woman just stared at her.

"I know you don't want to hear it but I'll give it to you anyway. It's none of my business what you do with your life but you should be aware that he's never going to leave his wife. You're an intelligent woman, Andrea. Just make sure you don't waste your life waiting for something that will never happen." Rose received another blank look and said, this time to Director Gardiner, "Director, hopefully we'll never see each other again under any circumstances. Goodbye."

At first the Director murmured something indiscernible, then he bit out louder, "That counts for me as well. Goodbye."

Rose walked to the door, followed by the Doctor and Romana. Standing in the doorframe she turned back and faced Director Gardiner for the last time. "One last question, just because I'm curious. Why?"

The Director seemed to understand. "You're wrong, you're... you're a thing."

Rose winced involuntarily but recovered quickly. She nodded, her suspicions confirmed.

The Doctor on the other hand did react not so acceptingly. "Don't you dare say that ever again," he growled, dark clouds in his eyes.

Rose laid a hand on his arm to calm him. "You know I've been called worse. What did the Dalek Emperor say? The abomination." She grinned. "Although coming from him I guess that counts as a compliment. Especially as he gave me the honour of a definite article."

The Doctor winked at her and hand in hand they walked out of the guest house. Romana closed the door behind them, careful not to bang it. The _click_ sounded loud in the silence outside.

"Back to the TARDIS," Rose said. "I hope Mala is still asleep."

Quickly the group walked down to the beach, where they had left the time ship, and stood for a moment to admire the sunset. A small smile played around the corner of Rose's mouth as if she was trying to hold back her laughter.

~o~o~o~

Back in the TARDIS Rose closed the doors and nearly collapsed against them, laughing like mad, her whole body shaking.

"What's so funny?" Romana asked.

"I bluffed him and he fell for it."

"You bluffed him? With what?"

"The whole camera in his office thing." She glanced at them incredulously. "Don't tell me you believed one word of that!"

"You made that up?" the Doctor asked. "You got me with that as well."

"You really fell for that?" She laughed again and continued, "Nah, the data privacy department would have had our heads if we had actually installed cameras in the offices. But he obviously didn't know that."

"That was brilliant," Romana grinned while she sent the ship into the Vortex.

"Yeah, but unfortunately we lost a lot of time while dealing with Director Gardiner," Rose stated, sober again. "It took us more than an hour. By now they should know that we're not there anymore."

"That shouldn't matter. We've got the document."

Rose shook her head. "I think you're wrong, Romana. I don't trust him. He'll search for a way to work around it."

"Rose is right," the Doctor threw in. "I guess just this once we should forget the rules."

"What do you mean?"

"When we land immediately after the Director made his call then we'll buy us some time."

"But we would cross our own timeline," Rose pointed out.

"Yes, but we won't be in the same place. That's much safer."

"Is it safer or _should_ it be safer?"

The Doctor tugged at his earlobe. "Weeell, it should be safer."

Rose turned to the Time Lady. "It's your ship – and your decision. What do you say?"

Romana grinned mischievously. "Sod the rules."

She changed the coordinates and glared at the Doctor who winced slightly and in turn looked at Rose.

"We should talk," he said.

"Let me just check on Mala and I'll join you in the galley," she gave back, not entirely sure what he wanted to talk about exactly.

In response he only slid his hand into hers and accompanied her. She glanced into a nearby bedroom. The little girl was still fast asleep in the bed the TARDIS had provided for her. The whole day – meeting Rose, going to Paris in a dimensionally transcendental time ship and seeing Earth for the first time – must have really worn her out.

A few minutes later Rose sat down on a chair in the galley while the Doctor made tea.

"You know, I've got the feeling I've consumed half of the Chinese tea harvest today," she joked to interrupt the awkward silence that had settled between them while they waited for the water to boil.

"Rose..." he began in a serious tone.

"Oh, I know that face," she said, her previous good mood suddenly gone. "Are you going to make my decisions for me? Again?"

"No!" he protested, louder than he had meant to. "No," he repeated calmer. "I'd never do that. Not after all that... and especially not to you. It's just..." He paused, unsure how to continue. "There's an opportunity, a tiny chance that..."

"Just say it. And if I don't like it I'll just yell at you, alright?"

He grinned at that, although it quickly vanished.

"Your life is not safe," he finally began again. "Not anymore. And I'm pretty sure they're gonna find a way to arrest you again. And that means..."

"I know," she interrupted him. "That's the reason why I quit. I was going to fake my death and hide. No one was ever going to know that I was still alive. Not even you," she added as an afterthought. A hurt expression crossed his face. "I don't want you to suffer because of me. You're the person on this planet that means most to me. And they would have used everyone I know to get to me. I just couldn't let that happen."

Again a whole set of emotions crossed his face, too fast to distinguish. Then he said, "You don't have to hide. Of course, you can, if you want to," he added quickly and continued, "But Romana and I thought about it and there might be a chance for you to get back."

"Where to? How?"

He grinned at her. "Your old universe of course. And as for the how... Do you remember when I told you it used to be easy, travelling between universes? It was. Although you normally would need at least three or four Time Lords to open a safe passage through the void. But if you have a Time Lord with a fully functional TARDIS on both sides, two would do. Children's play, see? And the Time Lord on the far side doesn't even have to be aware of you, as long as you can make a connection to his ship."

"Tell me if I got this straight: We've got a Time Lady here and a Time Lord there, so we could just open a passage by, I don't know, persuading Romana's TARDIS to connect to the Doctor's? If it was so easy why didn't Romana do it years ago?"


	24. Chapter 24

A/N: This chapter was driving me mad. I left so many lose ends everywhere in previous chapters and tried to tie at least some of them up. Feel free to point out any loopholes I might have missed.

* * *

**Chapter 24**

"_Tell me if I got this straight: We've got a Time Lady here and a Time Lord there, so we could just open a passage by, I don't know, persuading Romana's TARDIS to connect to the Doctor's? If it was so easy why didn't Romana do it years ago?"_

The Doctor rubbed his neck. "That's exactly the problem. A simple connection between the ships wouldn't be enough. There has to be a connection between the Time Lord and the other one's TARDIS if a connection between two Time Lords cannot be established. And a strong enough bond between Time Lords is extremely rare." Although at the moment he definitely wasn't going to explain the nature of such a bond. He sighed and rambled on, "But it _is_ possible for a Time Lord to contact another one's TARDIS. Well, should be. It's just unheard of." He got up to remove the whistling kettle from the cooker.

"Let me guess. There's also some sort of bond involved."

"Right. And that's a bit unlikely as well. Maybe not as unlikely as a bond between two Time Lords, but still... Let's just say, it's more likely to win the National Lottery jackpot thrice in a row."

"Did someone _ever_ do something like that?" she questioned. She knew him far too well, he thought, not for the first time today, while he prepared the tea pot.

Another sigh. "No. Until the war nobody would ever have needed to. There were always enough Time Lords around to open a passage. Especially because most of us didn't gallivant across the universe on their own, like me. And afterwards... On Darlig Ulv Stranden I told you I didn't know if I could come through. I tried everything I could think of but I couldn't cross the Void without someone on the other side. Your dimension cannon only worked because Davros had already weakened the fabric of the multiverse." He poured the no longer boiling water over the tea leaves.

"And how do you connect to someone's TARDIS? I thought you said every TARDIS was shielded?"

"Right. It's a security mechanism. Normally only the pilot could form a bond with his TARDIS strong enough for that sort of connection. So Romana couldn't do it because she wasn't bonded with my ship."

"But you should be able to contact your TARDIS, shouldn't you?"

With a far off look in his eyes he replied, "No. Not like this. That's gone."

She took his hand. "I'm sorry."

He nodded. "I'm still telepathic and I can feel Romana's TARDIS, well, any TARDIS, enough to pilot her properly, but the metacrisis somehow affected my bond with my, uh, his ship." Inwardly he winced again. It had been _his_ ship for over nine hundred years. But since the metacrisis personal pronouns were the curse of his life. Not even the Gallifreyan concept of language was suited to deal with something like that. After meeting his previous incarnations on several occasions he had thought it couldn't get worse. But apparently the universe had found a way.

"So," Rose summarized, interrupting his wandering thoughts, "we've still got a Time Lady here and a Time Lord there, although she can't contact his TARDIS, and you can't as well. Which leaves us... where exactly?"

"With you."

"What? But I'm no Time Lady!" Rose protested. "I'm human. Well, no, more like Jack. A fact." She paused for a moment and added calmly, "Sometimes I wondered why you let me stay while you ran from him."

The Doctor could see in her eyes that this question had bothered her for quite some time, maybe since the day she had found out that Jack was still alive and that and why he had left him. He looked at her solemnly. "Rose, until today I didn't even know that you don't age, let alone that you might be immortal. I don't know what you are, but you're not like Jack. I don't know why, but he's a fact and you're not. Do you believe me?" He held her gaze, willing her to believe him.

After a few seconds she said, "Yeah, I think I do. But that still doesn't help us in the current situation."

The manic grin was back on his face. "Oh, I wouldn't say that, Rose. Just two words: Bad Wolf. You looked into the TARDIS, into her heart. There's no stronger bond than that."

"But I'm not telepathic!"

"Not like a Time Lord, that's right. But with my, well his, TARDIS it should work. And Romana is going to help you with that," he added reassuringly.

"But you said a Time Lord had to make the connection. That would be Romana."

"Yeah, well..." he said tentatively. He wasn't sure Rose would like this. She had made it very clear right at the beginning that she didn't like anyone or anything messing with her head. "You would work as a relay or a conductor for Romana." That sounded awfully mechanical, he thought, and Rose didn't look happy at his explanation as well.

"Say that again? And in English."

"Well, basically you contact his TARDIS and Romana connects to your mind and reaches through your bond. So she should be able to open a passage through the void for you."

Rose merely nodded at the thought of someone being in her mind. She had gotten used to that long ago and she trusted Romana enough to know that the other woman wouldn't poke around. "And you really think this is going to work?"

He tugged at his earlobe. "Romana and I have talked about it and there's a chance. A tiny chance. Tiny as in a bit more likely than the really impossible sort of impossible. And besides," he grinned manically, "we won't find out if we don't try. So what do you say?"

Rose was silent for a long minute, while he poured tea in two cups and set them on the table.

"And what about you, Doctor? You keep saying 'you', as if you weren't included. Won't you come with us as well?" she asked finally, avoiding the answer to his question.

He should have known. Rose was far too clever to miss that. For a second he pondered if he should tell her an outright lie.

"No," he said and avoided her gaze by helping himself to his usual two sugars and stirring the concoction as if it was an important chemical experiment.

"But why not, Doctor?" Rose asked. "You won't have anyone left if we go."

"Two Time Lords can open a passage but it's hard to control during the flight through the void. So I'm going to do this from here."

"How?"

He grinned although he didn't exactly feel like it. "I'm going to borrow some Torchwood equipment."

"Right." Seeing the glare she shot him he guessed she knew what _borrow_ meant. To his relief she didn't pursue the topic further. "But why should you be the one who does it?"

Out of the frying pan into the fire. "I don't trust anyone else to keep you safe," was the simple answer. "It's not exactly like going from London to Cardiff, you know. Especially as the way you're gonna cross the void is definitely not in the manual. Anything could happen."

"Any other reason?"

Several. "None."

She stared at him for a moment, took a sip of her tea and got up. "I'll think about it."

With that she left the room. He stared at the empty doorframe in astonishment. He had thought she would jump at the chance, considering what she had said in his flat in Paris. He hoped he hadn't been wrong to tell her that he would stay. He wanted it to be her decision, without being influenced by his. So he had lied to her during their last conversation. Twice. Although he had promised himself he'd never do that again.

It wasn't really necessary to stay here to monitor the passage. He could build the equipment from what Romana had stored in her TARDIS instead of breaking into Torchwood and make every necessary adjustment during the flight. That had been the first lie. Pretty harmless, after all. The second lie had been that there were no other reasons for him to stay. But he couldn't tell her that. If he did Rose would never do what was best – for all of them actually. She would make him come with her or she would decide to stay and that would change everything. And not for the better.

~o~o~o~

Rose leant against a wall in a corridor leading to the console room, lost in thoughts. She was certain he hid something. She knew him too well for that. But she had decided a long time ago that they had to make their own decisions. So he wanted to stay. Maybe not because of the reason he had told her but nevertheless he wanted to stay. She strongly suspected it had something to do with the other him.

It was a chance, of course, something she'd never thought would happen. She knew it would be dangerous but that wasn't what stopped her. It never had and it never would. A part of her just didn't want him to be alone. And another part didn't want to leave this planet unprotected. Not only from the occasional alien invasion but also from people like Director Gardiner. With his attitude he was going to destroy anything she had helped to achieve.

Absent-minded she stroked the wall and was rewarded by a low hum. On the plus side there was the Doctor. And Jack and Mickey. At least two of them would be happy to see her again. And apparently her connection with the Doctor's TARDIS was the only chance for Romana to get back.

Connection. After Satellite Five she had wondered about her increasing ability to communicate with his TARDIS. That had to be another effect of becoming Bad Wolf. She looked at the opposite wall suspiciously. Could it be that Romana's time ship...? She quickly decided that the direct approach would be best.

"You tried to warn them, did you?" she asked the ceiling.

An affirmative hum was the answer.

"But how could you see something was going on?" She was astounded. The Doctor's TARDIS had sometimes given her impressions of things that might happen. She had never received something like a direct warning, for the sake of the timelines, but sometimes a distinct feeling of foreboding, a strong advice to be careful. The ship had done the same before they had landed on Krop Tor, and again on the day of the battle of Canary Wharf but even the TARDIS couldn't change much about a fixed point. She would never have thought that another time ship could do the same.

A picture of a blue box appeared in her mind, a golden figure in front of it, surrounded by a cobweb of golden lines.

A not quite familiar voice echoed in her mind. _"I can see the whole of time and space..."_

"Timelines and Bad Wolf?" she asked. "That explains how his TARDIS could communicate with me." Another affirmative hum. "But how could you?"

The picture changed. Next to the blue box appeared a smaller red one.

"Does that mean because you're an offspring of his TARDIS I've got a connection to you as well?"

The TARDIS hummed happily.

"So you could see something was going to happen. But why did you warn them and not me?"

The ship hesitated for a moment and then its hum sounded clearly indignant, while it showed her an image of the Foamasi delegation in the galley.

Rose understood and stroked the wall affectionately. "Sorry, dear. Of course you did." Now she thought about it she had first felt something was wrong when they had entered the ship after picking up the Doctor in Paris. At that time she had laid the blame on her confused emotions. She smiled. "I'm sorry for ignoring you. And thank you for being polite to our guests. I know you can't be clear without affecting the timelines, but your warning helped." She really wouldn't have wanted to be caught totally unaware. Without the TARDIS she might even have ignored Harriet's news. She didn't want to think about the consequences if she had been arrested and someone had found out about a certain human-Time Lord metacrisis. It was just as well that she had, let's face it, stolen his files, too.

Anyway, she still didn't know how to decide. Assuming she would go what would she do there? She had told him (had that only been this afternoon?) that it wouldn't have worked with the Time Lord him as well. And that was still true. So Jack and Torchwood? Was that the solution?

With a sigh she resumed her way to the console room, certain she would find Romana there, monitoring their flight path. Maybe talking to someone who wasn't emotionally involved in the mess with the human and the Time Lord version of the Doctor would help. When she entered the huge room with the tree-like support columns a bell announced the end of their journey.

"Oh, Rose," Romana said, looking up from the controls. "Could you help me with the landing? The TARDIS is not entirely happy with us crossing our timelines. It's going to be a bit bumpy."

Rose grinned. "Just like the old times, then." She took her place at the console and turned dials, switched levers and pressed buttons at Romana's orders while the TARDIS shook like mad for the second time in a couple of hours.

Thirty seconds later the Doctor appeared in the room as well. "What happened?" he shouted.

"She's young," Romana replied calmly. "Relatively speaking. And still sensitive about being in two places at the same time."

"But what about earlier? Don't you think that's got something to do with this as well?"

"Definitely not," Rose declared while she turned another dial.

Two confused faces turned to her. "How can you know that?" Romana asked.

"She showed me. She said that was a warning. She knew something was going on at the estate."

"But how can you know that?" the Doctor repeated Romana's earlier words.

Rose shrugged and subconsciously adjusted a lever without even looking. "She said I had a connection with her as well because she's a descendant of your TARDIS."

"She _said_ that?"

"Well, not exactly _said_, it was more like a concept she showed me."

He looked at her in astonishment. "That's impossible."

She grinned. "I thought we had established we wouldn't use that word anymore."

The Doctor paced the room, effectively ignoring the violent shaking and the two women who tried to stabilize their flight path during the landing sequence. He was interrupted in his musings when he heard Romana ask, "What are you doing, Rose?"


	25. Chapter 25

I'm sorry about the delay. Stupid writer's block...

* * *

**Chapter 25**

_The Doctor paced the room, effectively ignoring the violent shaking and the two women who were trying to stabilize their flight path during the landing sequence. He was interrupted in his musings when he heard Romana ask, "What are you doing, Rose?"_

Rose looked at her in utter confusion, noting for the first time that Romana had stopped telling her what to do next nearly two minutes ago and that the shaking had ceased. Then she glanced at the dial she was touching.

"I don't know," she said honestly. "I had the feeling that adjusting the..." She stared at the dial again, still confused. "That dial regulates the temporal buffers, doesn't it?"

Romana flipped the last switch and arrested the hand brake. They had landed.

"Yeah, but how do you know that?" the Doctor asked, completely ignoring the fact that they were back on Earth. "I never told you anything about temporal buffers."

"It just felt like the right thing... to do." Rose said slowly, then she looked at the ceiling in sudden understanding. "You did that, didn't you?"

An affirmative hum was the answer. Romana stared at her ship in astonishment.

"Oh, yes!" The Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver he had nicked in Romana's laboratory and scanned her. "In the last few years Bad Wolf changed you more than I would ever have thought possible. I could be wrong but I think it's a relatively slow process – which would explain why I didn't notice before. You're practically sizzling with every sort of energy I've ever heard of and even some I haven't." He grinned at her. "And because of that the TARDIS can communicate with you like she does with us." He put the sonic back in his definitely not-bigger-on-the-inside coat pocket and grabbed her hand. "Infirmary."

"Stop!" Romana said, having recovered from seeing Rose talking so casually to her ship. And the ship actually answering. This had been her ship alone for such a long time that she had become used to the TARDIS only communicating with her. "Doctor, aren't you forgetting something?" She pointed at the door. "If we want to save the Foamasi conference the time is now." She smiled. "And we still have a child on board that's going to miss her daddy when she wakes up."

"Right." Reluctantly he let go of Rose's hand. "I, uh, I'm going to get Mala. I've got the feeling we'll have to leave in a rush again."

"Oh, well, I guess that's better than 'What could possibly go wrong?' Terrible things are bound to happen whenever he uses that particular phrase." Rose said with a tentative smile. "I'm sorry. I didn't know... His TARDIS had been communicating with me since Satellite Five. I think I just forgot she hadn't done that before. And I missed her so much ever since I came here for the first time... I didn't even know she could do that. Show me pictures or project emotions, yes, but telling me what to do?" She sighed. "Probably I should have mentioned she showed me a picture of your Doctor when... after I told you about the war. Then you would have known something was wrong right from the beginning."

"You don't have to be sorry for anything, Rose," the Time Lady assured her. "And what you did really helped. So what did you think about my version of him?" she asked, trying to change the topic.

The grin was back. "Oh, all teeth and hair and multi-coloured scarf."

"Oi!" the Doctor said from behind, Mala in his arms, still fast asleep. "I looked dashing with that scarf!"

"I still wonder why he never strangled himself." Romana said in a conspiratorial stage whisper.

"Let's not get into a 'Who wore the most impractical clothes' contest! You'd lose, Romana." He grinned and continued, "White silk dress with a feather boa decorated coat."

"Somehow I can't picture you in clothes like that," Rose said, staring at Romana.

The Time Lady shrugged. "Different incarnation. And _he_ gave me the coat." She smiled mischievously. "Five seconds before he was captured in a trap."

"Anyway," the Doctor interrupted Rose who was about to continue the banter with Romana. "Important conference, remember?"

"Don't worry. I think you're looking cute. Especially with Mala in your arms." He beamed. Definitely no need to tell him that his previous incarnation had been dead sexy, she decided. God, even her mum had flirted with him. She had always guessed that the slap was also due to him ignoring her the first time he had been at her mum's. Hell hath no fury...

Rose shook her head and determinedly opened the door. When she stepped out, followed by the Doctor with Mala and Romana, she found herself in a courtyard, only lit by a few lamps and the moon. After a few seconds she recognized her surroundings and knew exactly where they were in relation to the conference room. Recalling the large safety arrangements she decided to take the chance that the normal security guards wouldn't know about Torchwood's attempt to arrest her. Or at least not who was to be taken into custody. So she marched towards a wooden door in a corner of the courtyard that led to a series of corridors. She was fairly certain that was the best way to avoid the Torchwood agents who might still be searching for them as she strongly suspected they were all scouring the garden and the surrounding woods.

In front of the door she stopped. "Great," she muttered sarcastically under her breath, "I forgot about the code." The system was so old it was mechanical and thus couldn't be overridden electronically. On the other hand the number of combinations was somewhat limited. With a sigh she set about to enter the first possible code when Romana reached past her, pressed three numbers and pressed the handle. The door opened without a sound.

The Doctor stared at her. "How did you know the combination?"

She grinned. "Because I paid attention when Harriet's assistant opened the door to the orangery. I just figured, with a system this old the code would be the same for every entrance."

"Thanks," Rose said. "I'll go first."

"Why you?" the Doctor asked.

"Because I know how to get to the conference room from here. And if we are detected you've got a chance to get away because they'll see me first. I really don't want them to lay hands on you. None of you. It's bad enough that they're after me. Just imagine what would happen if anyone found out that you're human-looking aliens."

The Doctor was about to protest when Rose added, "Besides, you've got Mala. Do you really want to give them that opportunity? They would use her as a bargaining chip against her father."

With a long look in her eyes he relented and Rose entered the corridor that opened behind the door. The Doctor was about to follow her when Mala began to stir in his arms. The little girl yawned.

"Where am I? Where's my daddy?"

"Shhh. We're on our way to find your daddy, Mala. Can you be very quiet right now? Like a quirren?" If he remembered correctly that was the Foamasi equivalent of a mouse.

"Are we playing hide and seek?"

The Doctor grinned. "Yeah. And we don't want the others to hear us."

"Okay. But can you let me down? I can walk on my own."

He set her gently on the floor and took her by the hand.

~o~o~o~

Once a certain someone had told her just to walk around as if she owned the place. A really good advice, Rose had decided years ago, and so she simply followed the corridor down to the main hall, ignoring the fact that two complete Torchwood teams had been searching for her only minutes ago. In their timeline, not in hers, of course. Hearing the short dialogue between the Doctor and Mala she turned around and winked at the little girl, putting her index finger on her lips. Mala mirrored the gesture and grinned back at her.

She passed several doors leading to offices, staff dining rooms and a bar and eventually neared a door that divided the corridor from the main hall. She slowed her pace. Surprisingly there weren't any security guards around. She didn't like that. Not one bit. They had to know about the entrance at the far end of the corridor. The number of possible combinations for the lock was only slightly above one hundred, so anyone would be able to open the door in under five minutes. There should have been guards in the courtyard as well.

It was Romana who uttered her thoughts aloud. "I wonder where the guards are."

"Yeah, me too," Rose replied. "Even if everyone has already called it a night there should have been someone at the entrance."

She had only just finished her sentence when a dark figure appeared in front of her, apparently having entered the corridor through a door on the left.

"Who is there?" A male voice asked.

"Agent Tyler, Torchwood," Rose responded calmly. "I'm accompanied by Professor Rutherford and Ms Smith, as well as the daughter of Commander Vaesite. We were asked to accompany her to her father." With a bit of luck he wouldn't question why she wasn't in the conference room and what she was doing in the presence of a small alien. She hesitated for a split second, then she added, attempting to distract him from Mala, "Why isn't someone guarding the entrance at the end of this corridor? Anyone could have entered the building." Her tone demanded an answer and the guard obliged.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. But your agency ordered most of my comrades away. I stayed in this room because it is the only one that overlooks both the main hall and the corridor."

Rose looked through the door the soldier had come through. He was right. The room served as a back office for the people normally working at reception in the main hall and granted access to the corridor as well.

"Good thinking," she looked at his name tag, "Private Johnson. I'll send additional personnel out as soon as I get back to the conference room."

"Thank you, ma'am."

Without a further look Rose opened the door at the end of the corridor and entered the main hall. The others followed, while the soldier retreated to the office. The hall was huge. At her far left a large wooden double-winged door served as the estate's main entrance and at the far right another door lead to a large conference room. There the official part of the conference against poverty took place. Facing the door they had entered through was a large fireplace that only served decorative purposes nowadays, a picture of one of the former owners hanging over the mantelpiece. Next to it was a narrow doorway she had kept missing when she had visited the estate for the first few times.

She pointed at the door next to the fireplace. "The orangery is that way. Do we need a plan?"

The Doctor bounced on the tip of his toes and grinned. "Have we ever really needed a plan?"

~o~o~o~

When a group of people in Torchwood combat gear had entered the conference room Colin had been shocked. Harriet had told them that Torchwood was going to arrest Rose but he somehow had not been able to believe it. They were Torchwood, for god's sake. They were supposed to be the good guys, defending the Earth against alien invasions. And the good guys definitely did not imprison one of their own without very good cause. He had been incredibly naive. Files! No wonder Rose had laughed at that. It was ridiculous. Maybe she had taken them, maybe not. It didn't matter. She wouldn't have done so without a reason. And apparently she had been right not to trust them. He didn't like that one bit.

Then chaos had broken out. Rose, the Doctor and Romana had exited the room through a secret door, leaving the agents banging against it. Harriet had demanded an answer to what the Torchwood agents thought they were doing but had been ignored by the lead agent. Instead he had shouted at his subordinates, ordering most of them into the adjacent room and leaving a couple of confused politicians and two agents behind, undoubtedly to arrest Rose if she showed up again and to keep an eye on the Foamasi and, quite possibly, on him as well.

After a few minutes during which everyone tried to regain their equilibrium he noticed that Harriet was sending him meaningful glances, indicating at her assistant who was still clutching a few sheets of paper. Suddenly he understood. Rose had been exposed and Harriet was supposed to be neutral. She had already done as much as she could during the negotiation, being the voice of reason. For the present heads of state he represented Torchwood. If they wanted to save the agreement and avoid further negotiations he had to act now. Otherwise the process would be delayed, new topics would come up and everything they had reached on behalf of the Foamasi so far would be in vain. They'd never hear the end of it, especially because the Doctor and Romana had vanished with Rose.

He gathered his courage. He had never done anything like this before. He was only a scientist, after all and bluffing was not his forte. While he walked over to Harriet's assistant who leaned against the table filled with beverages, he cast glances at the Torchwood agents standing near the door. One of them raised his arm to his earpiece, an astonished look on his face and asked for confirmation of something.

"James, would you please prepare the treaty?" Colin said, ignoring whatever had caused the Torchwood agents to ask for clarification.

The young man winced, clearly he hadn't expected to be addressed. He looked at Colin who kept his expression carefully neutral and nodded, bending down to collect the sheets that had escaped his grip when the Torchwood team had entered the conference room.

President Connors glared at him, nearly invading his personal space. "What do you think you're doing?"

"We have reached an agreement, haven't we?" Colin said. "It's already well past midnight and I think we should get the treaty signed as soon as possible."

"You think. You came here with Tyler, didn't you?"

Colin nodded.

"I guess then you're hand in glove with her."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Harriet asked, sounding offended. "I came with her as well."

"Don't you see? Professor Rutherford and his... whatever she is... going with her made that very clear. This is all Tyler's plot to establish a Foamasi colony on Earth so they can overrun our defences easier."

Colin laughed. "Why would she do that?"

"I don't know. Maybe because she's..."

Commander Vaesite interrupted the President, staring at him threateningly. "This is an offense to all Foamasi. We might be refugees but we are also honourable people. We have agreed to accept the outcome of this conference and we don't break our word."

His staff formed a line behind him. Although they were unarmed they suddenly looked like the warrior race they were. The President gulped the other heads of state followed the spectacle with expressions ranging from shock on Prime Minister Naybet's face to disgust on President Oudjani's, while Amadou Coulibaly kept his features carefully neutral.

"Are you accusing Rose Tyler of treachery?" Colin asked. "And me and Harriet Jones as well? Just because of some misunderstanding?"

"A misunderstanding?" the President retorted. "They came here with two teams. That can't be a misunderstanding. There must be more to it."

Harriet's voice was cold as ice as she said, "Last time I looked this was a democracy. And everyone was innocent until proven guilty."

"And why did she run when she was to be arrested? She could have waited for her trial," President Connors gave back.

"Well, apparently you didn't notice but there was a severe omission in the enumeration of rights she was granted," President Coulibaly cut in, causing everyone to stare at him in astonishment. "Ms Tyler and I have had our discrepancies, I admit that, but by letting Torchwood arresting her you stripped her of fundamental rights none of our countries...," his gesture included both Mounhira Naybet and Samir Oudjani, "would normally deny its citizens."

"Hold on," Colin asked the President, a thought occurring to him. "How did you know there were two teams?"

"Because they had to ask him before they acted," a male voice said from behind. He turned around and saw the Doctor standing in the doorframe, hands in his coat pockets, accompanied by Rose, Romana and a small Foamasi who immediately extricated her hand from the Doctor's grip, ran to Commander Vaesite and hugged him. His child? And how long had they already been standing there? "He knew all along."


	26. Chapter 26

A/N: I'm so sorry about the delay. I had writer's block from hell with this fic and I'm still not sure if this chapter works but... *shrugs*

Disclaimer: Still not mine, although I wouldn't have minded getting them as a birthday present...

* * *

**Chapter 26**

"_Because they had to ask him before they acted," a male voice said in his back. He turned around and saw the Doctor standing in the doorframe, hands in his coat pockets, accompanied by Rose, Romana and a small Foamasi who immediately extricated her hand from the Doctor's grip, ran to Commander Vaesite and hugged him. His child? And how long had they already been standing there? "He knew all along."_

The two Torchwood agents moved in their direction, although they made no attempt to follow the order they had been given earlier. Colin wondered why that was, while everyone else in the room ignored them.

"How do you know that?" the President asked.

"It's part of the checks and balances within Torchwood." Rose was the one who answered, despite the question being directed at the Doctor. "The organisation does not only have the right to arrest aliens but also citizens who fall under British jurisdiction, although in this case the Director has to approve the action _and_ they have to present the evidence to the President first because being arrested by Torchwood ultimately means the loss of certain civil rights. Nevertheless, I'm fairly certain they haven't done this here." She smiled mirthlessly at President Connors.

"Why?" Colin cut in.

"Because the Director called the teams back about..." She glanced at her watch, "...ten minutes ago. He wouldn't have done that if the case had been watertight. It turned out there was a _misunderstanding_," she said sarcastically. "Oh, I do believe the Director informed President Connors about the arrest and he agreed, but there was no actual evidence he could have examined."

That explained the agents not trying to arrest Rose, Colin thought. But...

"Why would I do that? You're one of the most trusted persons in this country. And how did you find out that the teams were called back?" President Connors asked.

Rose grinned and held up her mobile. "To answer your second question first, a little bird told me, once the warrant had been withdrawn." Colin was certain that this was a lie, given the fact that she had that amazing red box on her hands. "As to your first question, you've given the answer yourself: I'm trusted by many people. And I've already announced that I would quit Torchwood. Thus I won't be part of the government any longer, and being one of the most influential individuals in this country would make me a force to be reckoned with whenever this government did something I didn't approve of. So you tried to get rid of me."

"You're paranoid!"

Rose laughed. "Oh, I haven't been called paranoid in years." She turned to the Doctor. "Did you know, the last time someone called me that was when I said that the stars going out was bad. With a capital B."

"Oh, I don't know, I'd say that makes you the most visionary person on the entire planet," Harriet threw in before the Doctor could say something.

"Thanks."

"Oh, and President Connors?" Harriet added coldly, "Rest assured, there will be an investigation of your behaviour with regard to Miss Tyler. Don't think I don't have the power." The President stared at her wordlessly.

"Anyway," the Doctor said. "When we were so rudely interrupted by your former colleagues earlier this evening, Mr Sutton over there was about to prepare the contract." He looked at James. "But unless I terribly misunderstood everything going on in this room when we entered that hasn't happened yet."

James nodded.

"Then I'd suggest we get on with it." There was a touch of steel in his voice.

"And who do you think you are, giving us orders? You're just a physics professor who happened to date Rose Tyler for some time," President Connors said acridly. Colin saw a bemused smile playing around Rose's lips while Romana tried to stifle a laugh and eventually covered it up with a cough.

The Doctor didn't even flinch at the offensive tone. "You don't know me, President Connors. I once destroyed someone's life with six words. This time, I'd need less." His eyes were cold, his face expressionless. He walked over to the President who still stood less than two metres from Colin after threatening him and whispered something inaudible into his ear. President Connors blanched visibly. Then the Doctor stepped back and added, loud enough for everyone to hear, "Just a couple of words that could destroy you, whispered into the right ear at the right time. But I give you a chance. Just this once. Your decision." With that he turned around, his coat flapping around him, and went back to the two women.

The President took a deep breath while he tried to pull himself together and eventually nodded in James's direction. "Prepare the treaty, Mr Sutton." The assistant made a beeline towards the door and vanished.

~o~o~o~

An awkward silence had settled in the room. Once in a while someone left their place, went over to the table with the beverages and helped themselves to a cuppa, only to return to their previous position, warily eyed by the Torchwood agents who still hadn't left them alone. Mala clutched her father's hand, being unusually quiet for a lively child. Eventually the girl gathered her courage, walked over to Rose who still stood near the door and tugged at her sleeve.

"Tell me a story?"

Rose smiled. "Of course. What would you like to hear?"

"A fairy tale. From Earth."

Rose took Mala's hand and went to a sofa, pulling the girl on her lap. With a wistful tone in her voice she began, "Once upon a time there was a little girl whose mother had made her a red hooded cape. The girl loved the cape and went nowhere without it and thus was known throughout the country as little red riding hood..."

With a smile the Doctor took her hand and eventually whispered in her ear, "Another girl who never got the whole 'Don't wander off' thing..."

She grinned and continued with her story, her thoughts on an entirely different wolf. She had consented to be consumed by Bad Wolf, and although it hadn't killed her it had changed her life forever. The Doctor had saved her but he hadn't been able to completely undo what had happened to her. Bad Wolf was part of her and ever would be. She was about to finish with "...and they lived happily ever after..." when James returned with the documents and placed them on the conference table.

Commander Vaesite moved back to his place and sat down. President Coulibaly, Mounhira Naybet and President Oudjani followed his example. President Connors hesitated for a moment but eventually took his place as well, every once in a while casting glances at Rose and the Doctor. Another fifteen minutes later the parties signed the treaty, witnessed by Harriet Jones as the arbitrator.

When a steward entered the room with a tray and a few bottles of champagne the Doctor winked at Rose and Romana and they left the room without a word.

"Let's go while they're still busy sipping champagne," he said, when they were in the corridor, and turned right towards the main hall, back in the direction of the TARDIS. "I really don't want to know if the President or Torchwood have got anything else up their sleeves. But at the moment they won't miss us. Most of them are not exactly fond of us, well, apart from the aliens, of course, and I don't think Harriet would say anything."

"But what about the Foamasi? Won't they be stuck here?"

"Nah, the commander will contact his fleet as soon as he can. It will take them less than twenty-four hours to enter the orbit and start the colonisation in the Sahara. The commander said that they don't have much time. If they don't settle on Earth within the next month it will be too late for the first sowing. And that would be disastrous for them. The presence of the other heads of state will ensure their safety until their fleet arrives. I don't think the three of them would easily waive the technological advantages the Foamasi are willing to provide."

"So everything is sorted?" Romana asked.

"Looks like that. They'll have to manage on their own from now on anyway," Rose replied.

"You're going back?" The Time Lady looked at her questioningly.

"Well, at least I can't stay here anymore. You know what's going to happen if I don't go. But..." She looked at Romana. "We could always..."

"No!" the Doctor interrupted emphatically. "You're not doing that. Not for me, not for anybody. You're _not_ going to waste your time in this universe. We're friends, right?"

Rose nodded. "Of course."

"Then, for once, just listen to me and go. I don't want you to stay until I'm gone. That would feel like... I know you wouldn't mean it like that but it would feel like pity nonetheless."

Rose took his hand. "Okay. I'll go then. Although I wished you'd come with us. You're not safe here either and you know it. And don't tell me that you have to monitor the flight from here. I didn't believe that the first time you said it." She smiled at him, sadness in her eyes.

"If I came with you, where would be the difference to you staying here until I'm gone? If I stay I can finally do what I should have done years ago, what you did. Build my own life, without my past, everything that I have been and can no longer be, overshadowing my future." He was silent for a moment. "I've never seen it as a gift before, this life. For the past years I wasted my time being someone I wasn't, someone I never could be, or wishing I still was who I had been, although I knew I could never go back. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I won't waste any second from now on."

Rose contemplated this for a moment. Deep inside she knew he hadn't been so alive for years. She squeezed his hand, telling him wordlessly that she understood. Then she grinned suddenly. "Didn't you mention something about borrowing Torchwood equipment?"

"Yeah. Fancy some breaking and entering?"

"Haven't done that one in years. But I guess it's like bicycling – especially when a sonic screwdriver does the breaking."

"Exactly." He grinned back.

"You two are mad," Romana announced and opened the door to the courtyard where they had left the TARDIS, a bright smile on her face.

"You notice that _now_?" the Doctor gave back.

"It was time to mention it again. It's been more than two hours since someone said something like that. So Torchwood, then?"

"Depends on what we need," Rose said. "We should have a look at the inventory first. That'll save us a lot of time in the storage area."

"Do you think you'll still have access to their network?"

"Not with my usual access codes, no. But remember the UNIT override password? Mickey did the same thing here, he programmed a backdoor into the system."

"_He_ did that?" The Doctor sounded absolutely incredulous.

"Yeah. Don't look at me like that. You tend to underestimate him. He didn't trust them either. He told me that he'd talked with Jake during that year they spent hunting Cybermen. That's how the Preachers started, actually. A group keeping the government under surveillance. And then they found out about John Lumic and Cybus Industries." She followed Romana into the TARDIS and continued, "The Preachers are still out there, and I'm thankful for that. _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ Torchwood needs someone to keep them in check. You saw it. The system doesn't work if you've got a President who doesn't care about people's rights. Harriet would never have let that happen. She wouldn't have let me get away if they had been able to prove their accusations but she would never have ordered them to arrest me without conclusive evidence."

"But why..."

She sighed. "It's not as if everything was bad. It's never just black or white. More like different shades of grey. Many people work there because they genuinely want to help. Unfortunately the John-Wayne-faction gets larger." Seeing Romana's confused expression she added, disgust in her voice, "Only a dead alien is a good alien."

"That's just... sad."

"Yeah," Rose said. "Let's get out of here."

A few seconds later the TARDIS dematerialised.

~o~o~o~

Rose reappeared in the console room the moment the TARDIS landed in a long forgotten archive in sublevel C of Torchwood Tower. She had used the time to change into a pair of jeans and a white blouse she had found in Romana's wardrobe room. A bit of searching had also led to the discovery of a short brown leather jacket and a pair of plimsolls.

"Me again," she said with a smile. "Let's go, shall we?"

Rose was fairly certain she was the only Torchwood employee to have entered this room in more than twenty years. It had the advantage of being near the storage area and there was a surprising lack of CCTV in here. Okay, maybe not so surprising, given the reason she had come here twenty years ago. She'd simply disabled the camera in the corner over the door and maintenance had never repaired it. There had been more important things to do than replacing a camera in an archive room that no one ever used. She smiled at the memories. "Home, sweet home!"

The Doctor looked at her as if he suspected she had lost it.

She laughed at his expression. "No, I haven't developed a liking for dusty archives in the last couple of years. I just spent a lot of time here when I tried to find out how the dimension jumpers had worked in the first place, before the dimension cannon became an official project. I guess Pete and Mickey always suspected what I was doing down here but they never said a word."

Romana had ignored them and already opened the door to the corridor. "Are you coming?" she asked.

"The storage area is down the left," Rose said and took the lead. "There shouldn't be too many people around at three o'clock in the morning, but there is always someone down here. This building never sleeps." She grinned. "Like a wise person once said: Just behave as if you owned the place."

"I'm impressed," the Doctor said. "You actually listened to me?"

"Hey, I do that more often than you think."

"And what about the whole 'Don't wander off' thing?"

Romana laughed. "Doctor, no one ever listened to that."

"K-9 did!" he gave back a bit petulantly.

"He's a robot!"

"That's not the point!"

"Yes, it is."

"No, it's not."

Rose chose this moment to interrupt the banter and opened the next door on her left. "This is the storage area for everything classified as 'useless junk'."

"Classified by whom?" the Doctor asked.

"A couple of scientists and me, on occasion. I had a look into whatever the research department was doing approximately once a week. And I managed to hide a couple of the more dangerous items right under their respective noses, before they found out what the things they were researching were capable of. Unfortunately Villengard is not exactly famous for its banana groves in this universe. I came across weapons that looked even more sophisticated than Jack's sonic disruptor and I thought it would be a good idea to identify them as broken hairdryers, Telurian mixers or electric toothbrushes for Raxacoricofallapatorians after I had disabled them." She grinned. "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop the drain. I just got rid of a few processors, fried a couple of circuits, removed a few screws and voilà – useless space junk."

The Doctor broke into laughter. "Well done, Mr Scott."

"Thank you, Mr Spock." She saluted mock-seriously and continued, still grinning, "It really helped that the people in research are willing to believe a lot of rubbish if the report just sounds scientific enough. And of course I called the 'mixer' a futuristic electronic device that was used to produce a compound of chemical or biological substances which was to be processed in a specific environment later. With all the chemical formulas I put into that report no one ever noticed that I gave them the recipe for my mum's Christmas biscuits."

"You gave them the recipe of a weapon of mass destruction?" the Doctor asked. Two seconds later he was rubbing his arm.

Romana sniggered. "You know that he makes up a lot of stuff himself, don't you?" she said.

"From the moment he 'jiggery-pokeried' my mobile," she replied with a smile. "How do you think I came up with that sort of rubbish in the first place? Anyway, here we should find your macro-kinetic wavelength manipulator, along with most of the other things on your shopping list." She looked at the printout of the inventory.

~o~o~o~

Fifteen minutes later they had collected nearly everything they needed, but the storage location where the macro-kinetic wavelength manipulator should have been was empty.

"It must be in this room," Rose said. "I don't think anyone would remove it without updating the database. Change the storage location, possibly, but not remove it."

They searched the room methodically, shelf after shelf, looking for everything that fitted the Doctor's description. Eventually Romana called from the last row of shelves. "Doctor? I think I've found it." And added a split second later in a calm, but very low voice, "Oh, hell."

Despite the considerably long time he had known Romana in his fourth incarnation the Doctor had never heard her swear before. And her tone sent a shiver down his spine. With a few long and, as he tried to tell himself, unhurried steps he left the row he had been searching and crossed the room. Fifteen seconds later he stood next to Romana, who was kneeling on the floor, and stared in disbelief at the object lying next to the macro-kinetic wavelength manipulator. One look into Romana's eyes confirmed his worst suspicions. He returned his attention to the little orb on the shelf. After another ten seconds, during which neither Romana nor he had done as much as blink, Rose appeared by his side.

"Rose, tell me that you didn't declare this a billiard ball from New Earth." His voice was strained. The object in question was about two and a half inch in diameter and with its colour it was easy to mistake it for a carom object ball at first glance, although the engraved lines that had started to glow faintly in the last minute were definitely of alien origin, as was the alloy it was made of. All in all, it looked pretty harmless. Unfortunately it was anything but.

She shot him a confused look. "I've never seen it before. I'm not the only one who classified alien items in the last twenty years, you know."

"Do you even know what that is?" He knew he sounded outright dangerous now and he was still staring at the object on the shelf.

"Doctor..." Romana said and twisted her head awkwardly to face him again. "How can she possibly know?"

"Would anyone of you _please_ tell me what we are staring at?"

The Doctor opened his mouth but the words wouldn't come. He couldn't bring himself to say it.

"It's a Time Bomb," Romana answered finally.

"Something tells me we're not talking explosives with an ordinary time fuse. So what does that mean? Does it destabilise the time-space continuum?"

"Basically they speed up time. People die of old age within seconds, buildings crumble to dust within minutes. While the direct impact only applies to a comparatively small area, they kill time-sensitive beings in a much larger perimeter. And you're right, they leave weak points in the time-space continuum. A Time Bomb this size would affect everything in a radius of about five hundred metres, maybe a bit more..."

Eventually the Doctor found his voice again, although if he hadn't known that it was his he probably wouldn't have recognised it. "Time Bombs are designed for terror. In fact, they don't cause that much actual damage, compared with some of the other weapons the Daleks developed over time. But there is this nasty detail about them. They are triggered by Gallifreyan DNA. The Daleks used them in the Time War, although the concept itself is much older. You see how they look. Harmless. For humans they are exactly that. It could have lain here for centuries and nothing would ever have happened. For Gallifreyans..." His voice trailed off. Rose took his hand and squeezed it. Eventually he went on, in a voice so brittle that the words were barely understandable, "It was one of the most horrible acts of the entire war. They air-dropped a cluster bomb over the Academy and it ejected bomblets, much smaller than this one, about the size of marbles. The children picked them up..." He couldn't continue. He closed his eyes but he couldn't shut out the images. Then he was enfolded in a warm embrace. Rose.

They stood there for what seemed to be a long time but could only have been mere seconds. Eventually he pulled himself together and whispered, "Thank you."

Rose simply nodded. Then she said, "So if it's only activated..." She paused. "Wait a minute..." She stared at them in horror.

"I grazed it when I reached for the manipulator. That's why it is glowing. And it is getting stronger," Romana said. "I didn't recognise it for what it was. I'm sorry. It's going to explode in approximately twenty-five minutes. And we can't bring it out of here with the TARDIS. It would explode as soon as we entered the Vortex."

"You see, that's the two other nasty things about Time Bombs. They are affected by the Time Vortex – and they take their time. People touch them and then they forget about it or they pocket them because they don't know what they are. Not many people had ever seen a Time Bomb before the Time War." He looked Romana in the eyes. "It's not your fault. There's no way you could have expected anything like this here. After all, there aren't any Daleks in this universe, at least as far as we know."

"And we still can find out how it got here in the first place after we have done something about it," Rose added. "We _can_ do something about it, right?"

He ran his hand through his hair. "You won't like this."

"No, probably not. But I've got the feeling you'll tell me anyway."

"Remember what I said about the Krillitanes?"

"Sure."

"Replace suitcase with lorry." He thought for a moment. "No, make that two lorries. There is no way I can completely disable it. But with a bit of luck I can change it to self-destruct – that should simply cause an ordinary explosion – and it should be much smaller."

"How much smaller?"

He rubbed his neck and avoided her glance. "Uh, twenty-five metre in radius instead of five hundred? Roughly estimated."

"Would an explosion of this size affect the integral structure of the building?"

"I don't know. It depends on where we are in relation to the foundations and the supporting walls. The entire building might collapse."

"That's a risk I'm not going to take," Rose said decisively. "There are still people in this building. And although I might not like what some of them think I'm not going to risk their lives. How long do you think you need to start the self destruction sequence?"

"Ten minutes, maximum."

"Is that the optimistic estimation?"

"No, actually the conservative one." He was offended. Who did she take him for? Oh, probably for who he was.

"And how much time will you have to reach the TARDIS?"

"Best case? One minute. Worst case: fifteen seconds." That _was_ the optimistic estimation, although he was fairly certain Rose knew that.

"Okay, let's say, you need exactly ten minutes. With the firemen's lifts it is possible to evacuate the building in three minutes when it is as empty as it should be right now. I'll activate the evacuation alarm in five minutes, that should give them an additional two minutes to get out of here, but the time should be too short to search the building for intruders."

The Doctor nodded. Sometime in the last fifteen years Rose must have learnt to trust people's abilities instead of arguing if someone was about to do something dangerous but necessary. She hugged him and whispered into his ear, "Be careful. Just this once." Although she clearly had not forgotten his willingness to take chances without thinking about the danger. He smiled and hugged her back. When he released her she collected the macro-kinetic wavelength manipulator and a few parts they had set aside and left the room. Then Romana hugged him as well.

"If I'm not back in the TARDIS in eleven minutes, go back in time and inform the authorities. Fifteen minutes should be enough to evacuate the area at this time of the night and I don't think it would cause a major paradox," he said in Gallifreyan.

Romana looked him into the eyes and whatever it was she saw there seemed to convince her that he wouldn't listen to reasoning. She wordlessly collected the other items they would need for the void monitor and followed Rose back to the TARDIS.

He knelt down in front of the shelf and stared at the tiny red ball with the golden glowing lines. Such a small thing and it could do so much damage. He scanned it closely with his sonic screwdriver and after a few more seconds of pondering about the best way to open its hull he set about to work.

Three minutes twenty. The shell of the bomb opened and revealed the mechanism inside. For something made by Daleks it was almost elegant in design. He quickly identified the fuses and sorted the wires into harmless, probably harmless, most likely not harmless and definitely dangerous before he started to disconnect them.

Four minutes fifty-five. The Doctor briefly stopped working. Any second now Rose would... A blaring alarm sounded through the entire building, accompanied by a computerised voice demanding immediate evacuation. He ignored it and disconnected the last of the probably harmless wires only to reveal an unexpected problem his earlier scan had not detected. The Time Bomb had an inner hull about two centimetres in diameter and it was deadlock-sealed.

Five minutes twenty-five. He frantically searched the shelves. He had seen it somewhere around here... Or had it been the next row? There it was! An Aldebaranian micro-drill. Normally he would have done the same Rose or the Torchwood scientists had and declared it space junk, but Aldebaranian micro-drills had one specialty: they could open deadlock seals. A bit of fiddling with the wiring and recharging of the battery and it was as good as new.

Seven minutes ten. Finally the deadlock seal gave way. The Doctor carefully removed the upper half of the inner hull and suffered a shock. The Time Bomb was bigger on the inside. And he didn't even want to _think_ about the implications of this discovery. Nor did he have the time.

Nine minutes thirty. Nearly everything in the universe could be boiled down to a simple decision. Coffee or tea. Tux or suit. Condemn the world or lose Rose Tyler. The Time Bomb was no exception. Green or red wire? The right one would leave him one minute to get back to the TARDIS and cause a comparably minor ordinary explosion, the wrong one would reduce the countdown to fifteen seconds and destroy literally everything in a radius of more than two miles, thanks to the bomb being bigger on the inside. Romana's TARDIS hopefully was the one thing that would survive this.

Nine minutes fifty-three. Well, he'd always liked hope. The Doctor closed his eyes for a second, then he chose green.

* * *

A/N: Please don't kill me! *runs and hides*


	27. Chapter 27

The major plotline of this fic was developed before EoT aired. So this chapter might not be entirely canon-compliant.

Sorry about the delay.

* * *

**Chapter 27**

_Nine minutes thirty. Nearly everything in the universe could be boiled down to a simple decision. Coffee or tea. Tux or suit. Condemn the world or lose Rose Tyler. The Time Bomb was no exception. Green or red wire? _

_Nine minutes fifty-three. Well, he'd always liked hope. The Doctor closed his eyes for a second, then he chose green._

~o~o~o~

When Romana opened the door to the archive room she found Rose leaning against the TARDIS doors, the macro-kinetic wavelength manipulator lying at her feet.

"What did he say?"

She really knew him well, the Time Lady decided. "Do you really have to ask?"

Rose shook her head. "Not really. I guess he implied that he didn't know if he would make it alive."

"Pretty much, yes. He told me to go back in time and inform the authorities if he wasn't back in..." She glanced at her watch, "...ten minutes from now on."

"Brilliant plan B," Rose said sarcastically. "Remind me that I yell at him when he gets back." She picked up the equipment. "Let's get this stuff inside." Then she said, smiling wryly, "You know what? With the explosion destroying a large part of the storage area no one is going to notice that something is missing. We couldn't have planned a better cover-up if we had tried."

"That's a relief." Now Romana was the one being sarcastic.

"No, really. He said he was staying. And he really doesn't need Torchwood on his heels because we're stealing alien artefacts. It's bad enough with Director Gardiner and President Connors being the charming personalities they are, and him threatening the President certainly didn't help the situation. Do you have any idea what would happen if they suspected that he had something to do with _this_? It's not like he could leave the planet in an instant."

Rose definitely had a point, Romana thought and then she had an idea.

~o~o~o~

"I'm going to activate the alarm," Rose said after three minutes of staring at the opposite wall of Romana's console room. The other woman nodded without even looking up. She was scribbling furiously, her brows furrowed in concentration.

With a shrug Rose left the TARDIS and turned to the right when she entered the corridor. She followed it around the corner and discovered a camera facing the nearest alarm button. Normally she wouldn't want to be discovered, but maybe she could turn this into an advantage.

She quickly calculated the time since they had left the estate. She could have made it with conventional transport, at least at this time of the night and in blatant ignorance of the speed limits. If they saw only her down here and didn't have any hard evidence on what the three of them had been up to, then she maybe could use the footage for her purposes while the Doctor still would be save. At least more or less, given the lifestyle he probably would return to. Had already returned to, in fact. Trying to defuse a bomb was certainly not on the list of risk-free extracurricular activities. And he had called _her_ jeopardy-friendly.

With a bit of luck she hadn't spent all her acting skills during the negotiations. She took a deep breath and broke into a run, aiming directly for the alarm button, and pressed it. The alarm went off and a computerised voice instructed the employees to leave the building instantly. Then she turned her attention to the intercom system and activated it. "Security?"

"This is security officer Rick Blaine speaking. What's going on?"

Apparently she hadn't run out of luck yet. Rick was one of the three persons the Preachers had planted in Torchwood. "This is Rose Tyler. I've got information about an impending explosion in sublevel C. I'm trying to defuse an alien bomb."

"Rose? A bomb? How do you know that? And how did you get in here?"

"Does it matter how I know that?" she countered. "And I got here through the back entrance. The door code changes only every other day and it doesn't even require a key card." True, because Mickey had programmed it like that. "You should really do something about it."

"Do you need help?"

"No. It's too small for more than one person to work on it and no one else has ever seen that technology before. Evacuate the building and part of the surrounding area if you can. Oh, and Ilsa Lund sends her love," she added with a smile. 'Ilsa Lund' was a code word that told him not to question her further or that he could trust the person who used it. She had made the mental connection with the movie as soon as Pete had introduced Rick ten years ago, but _Casablanca_ had never existed in this universe, so no one else would ever notice the reference.

"She'll never give up, will she?" he replied with a fake sigh.

"No," she said with a small laugh.

"Good luck, Rose."

"Thanks."

She turned around and raced back to the TARDIS. She knew the camera would tape this, but she made no attempt to avoid it. She needed visual proof that she had been down here during the explosion.

"What took you so long?" Romana asked when she entered the time ship.

"I contacted security and made them think it was only me down here, trying to defuse that bomb."

Romana didn't exactly look happy at her statement. "You know that this might cause a paradox if we have to go back in time, don't you? If we have to inform the authorities Torchwood might know about the bomb before you tell them about it."

Rose considered Romana's objections and had to admit that they were justified. "You're right. But the opportunity was too good to waste it. The Doctor said there would be an explosion no matter what, and if they think I died down here... Faking my death is the best way to ensure that Torchwood is going to leave him alone. They still think he's a boring human physics professor who used to work for them for a while, during the time when we were together. They already assumed back then that he'd only done it because he wanted to impress me, and I'd rather they held onto that belief."

"But what about the fact we helped you escape at the conference?"

"Well, _you_ don't even exist on this planet. Nobody had ever seen you before you showed up at the conference and nobody ever will see you again. Let me think..." Rose paced the room for a bit. "Oh yes! You're a shape-shifting alien that took human form to convince Professor Rutherford to hand over our scientific secrets. Cliché, I know, but it'll work. Everybody knows he's got a thing for blondes, the tabloids made sure of that when he met Sophia. I was blonde when I first got here, Sophia's blonde, you're blonde. Detect a pattern?" She grinned. "You, well, the shape-shifter had to help him because she would have blown her cover otherwise. Professor Rutherford discovered just in time what her real mission was and called Torchwood security. One of the security officers is a member of the Preachers and he'd confirm that you've been turned into a puddle of alien goo."

"Thanks. No one ever compared me to slime before." Romana pretended to be offended.

"We could always call it 'a large quantity of a glutinous substance of possible extraterrestrial origin'," Rose suggested with a wink.

"You know that this is absolutely mad."

"And that's why it'll work. As for the Doctor, he threatened the President because he doesn't exactly like to be treated condescendingly, and he helped me because he simply can't see a damsel in distress and _not_ help her, especially given our very well documented common history. We probably could even get Sophia to confirm that they only parted because of me." She grinned. "She would make a fantastic Lady Di. You know, all that 'Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded' stuff, although I should better change the script from 'marriage' to 'relationship'."

The Time Lady laughed. "If you don't mind being killed if he ever finds out that he is supposed to be Prince Charles in that scheme."

"Nah, even with larger ears he looked much better. Besides, that would make me Camilla."

"In that case he might actually die laughing." As soon as she had finished the sentence Romana stared at Rose in horror. "What if..."

Rose looked her in the eyes. "I trust him. I always have. He'll make it." They fell silent.

~o~o~o~

Thirty seconds later the Doctor dashed through the door and closed it behind him. "Take us into the Vortex. Now!"

Romana immediately flipped the last switch and the sequence started. He leaned against the door, still trying to catch his breath.

"What happened?" Rose asked.

"The bomb is bigger on the inside. Which equals bigger explosion," he managed between ragged breaths. At Rose's shocked expression he added, "Luckily an ordinary one. The other kind would have been disastrous."

Slowly the other implication of his first sentence sank in and Rose said, "But bigger on the inside means..."

"Time Lord technology, yes," he finished her sentence.

"A Dalek weapon with Time Lord technology. But how could they..."

He interrupted her again. "There is only one answer I can think of and I really wished there was another one." He looked Romana in the eyes. "All those years I've asked myself how the Daleks achieved some of their victories. Some of the things that happened on Arcardia and in so many other battles should have been impossible. It seems we had a traitor on our side." He buried his face in his hands for a few seconds, then he looked up again. "I don't think even the Master would have done something that monumentally stupid. Using them to take over a galaxy, yes, he tried that before, but handing over Gallifrey and the entire universe in addition? Never. He would have known that he couldn't control them any longer once they set foot on Gallifrey. Especially if he gave them access to Time Lord technology first."

Rose thought for a few seconds. "You know, I've always wondered how the Cult of Skaro and the Genesis Ark got their hands on that Void Ship, assuming it wasn't them who created it, of course. Remember, the Cyberleader said they simply followed the ship through the Void. Something about that doesn't add up."

He stared at her. "You're right. It doesn't make sense. The Daleks don't even have the capacity for trans-dimensional travel, so they can't have created the Void Ship. Which brings us back to the traitor."

"You think the Void Ship is Time Lord technology, too, and that both events are somehow connected?"

He shrugged. "What are the chances of them being _not_ connected? Until that day at Canary Wharf I had never seen anything like the Void Ship. But the number of species who were able to cross or access the Void is limited. Romana?"

The Time Lady stared thoughtfully at one of her monitors. "You know, when I was at the Academy some of the scientists were discussing a theory that might have made a Void Ship possible, but I never heard that someone actually was trying to build one. I thought it was just an intellectual game without a specific purpose." She pondered for a moment. "What about the design? Anything to give its origin away?"

The Doctor shook his head. "It was simply a sphere, no electromagnetic field, no radiation, no atomic mass whatsoever, until it activated and hell broke loose."

"Well, that certainly doesn't narrow it down. I can think of probably half a dozen species that would be able to do that and have knowledge about trans-dimensional travel, but I can't see them helping the Daleks."

"What about Davros?" Rose asked. "Could it be his creation?"

The Doctor paced the room. "Maybe. But he still would have needed information about trans-dimensional travel."He raked his hand through his hair. "Oh, I've been stupid. When Davros talked about the Reality Bomb he said he was going to use the rift in the Medusa Cascade to destroy the multi-verse. He must have found out how he could manipulate the rift and if he could do that... How come _he_ didn't notice that? After all he was the one in the vaults with Davros while I was busy constructing a Z-neutrino biological inversion catalyser to kill off the Daleks."

"You _what_?" Romana sounded horrified. "That's... If you had gotten the equations only infinitesimally wrong you would have killed every living being in a radius of a couple of million miles, not just the Daleks."

He stared at her, anger blazing in his eyes. "Do you think I would have taken such a risk without checking at least a dozen times that the calculations were correct? After Gallifrey? Do you really think that? Because that's what _he_ thought. That I'm a psychotic mass murderer who had to be imprisoned in another universe, preferably without the opportunity to ever leave this planet, because apparently I'm dangerous. Davros was going to destroy the universe, every dimension, everything. I had to weight the existence of all of reality against annihilating the Daleks while he, and you," he glared at Rose, "were absolutely useless. So think about that, Romana, and then tell me what you would have done."

His outburst surprised himself almost as much as Romana and Rose. He had thought that in the last fifteen years he had come to terms with what the Time Lord him had done, but obviously he had been wrong. He rubbed his face, thoroughly exhausted, and looked up again. "I'm sorry. It's not your fault, Rose."

"I know." She gave him a wry grin. "Come here."

Tentatively he approached her, unconsciously rubbing his cheek.

"You idiot, I'm not going to slap you." She embraced him and he hugged her back thankfully.

Romana was silent for a long time and stared at the instruments on her console. He would have accepted every bet that she didn't even see them. Eventually she turned to him and looked him in the eyes. "I don't know what I would have decided, but I know you wouldn't have done it unless there had been no other way."

He nodded, thankful that she believed him. He hadn't told her the entire truth about what had happened on the Crucible but close enough. Rose shot him a glance but he was certain she wouldn't say anything. Not that he ever wanted to make this decision again, but a rather large part of him wasn't sorry that the Daleks had been destroyed. The universe was definitely safer because of that, at least until the next megalomaniac decided to resurrect them.

In an attempt to change the subject he said, "So, where were we? Right, Davros. Unless he got very, very clever himself he would have needed help, especially for the temporal and multi-dimensional equations. That's something they don't teach at your average university. They might have captured one of our scientists, but we would have known that. Unless it was sanctioned..." He interrupted himself and continued, "Weeeell, the President behaved a bit weird during the course of the war." On second thoughts that assertion might be an understatement. And he really hadn't meant to mention that. Given his he really should stop thinking aloud. Sometimes he even wondered if the character traits he had acquired from Donna didn't make things worse.

"The President? Who?" Romana asked.

"Rassilon." He hoped that the others didn't notice how distressed he sounded. Certainly not the best choice of subjects, he realised.

"That's a joke, isn't it?"

"I wished it was."

"But..."

"Everything was already going a bit pear-shaped," that was _definitely_ an understatement, he thought, "when he appeared out of nowhere. Or more accurately, right out of his tomb. And you can bet no one would have denied him the presidency. The members of the High Council would have given him everything he wanted. They wanted to believe that he was there to save us. _I_ wanted to believe he would save us. He gave us hope. You know the legends. If we believed in gods he would have been exactly that. And at some point, shortly after the fall of Arcadia, his behaviour began to fit the description of a deity gone insane."

The Doctor shrugged in feigned nonchalance, although he felt anything but. The last few days of Gallifrey were something he yearned to forget. He would give nearly anything for that gift. So he continued in yet another see-through attempt to move the conversation to safer territory, "Anyway, that still doesn't explain how the Time Bomb got here and how the Cybermen were able to follow the Void Ship when it never entered this universe in the first place."

Judging from the glare she gave him he was fairly certain that Rose knew what he was doing. She had always been able to tell when he didn't want to talk about something. He was eternally grateful she let it go this time. He would never tell anybody that there had been another reason than just the Daleks overrunning the universe for the actions he had taken at the end of the Time War. That knowledge was solely his burden to carry.

"And we still don't know why the Cult of Skaro and the Genesis Ark were in the Void Ship and who built it," Romana added. "Something about this still doesn't make sense."

"Do you think Davros would have been able to build a bigger-on-the-inside Time Bomb?" Rose asked.

"That's entirely possible."

"We don't know how long it's been here, but I think we can safely assume that it is junk from the Time War that ended up here somehow."

The Doctor nodded. "There is, well, _was_ only one Gallifrey in the multi-verse. It's like it was the axis that connected all universes, the point where the distance between them was smallest. So, the Cult of Skaro ran for their lives, and when their Void Ship left this universe the Time Bomb just got carried along in its wake." He paused and continued, thinking aloud, "Entering the Void produces a lot of energy. I haven't got an idea if the ship really did have engines, but breaking through the wall should have had side effects regardless."

"Such as?" Rose asked.

"Do you remember when we crossed the Void for the first time? You might not have noticed, but we accelerated until we broke through on this side, where we crashed."

"You mean, when they entered the Void they gained speed until they, for lack of a better word, ricocheted from the other side? Like a billiard ball caroming from cushion to cushion?"

"Exactly." He grinned manically.

"Okay, let's say that caused all the breaches between the universes. Does that mean when we first came here we simply hit a weak spot and broke through? And that's how the Time Bomb ended up here, too? It followed the Void Ship and fell through a breach the ship created?"

"It's the only plausible explanation I can think of." The Doctor was silent for about three seconds. Then he continued, in yet another attempt to get the discussion away from any topic that might be slightly related to the Time War, "Anyway, we've got everything we need for the void monitor. Now we only have to build it."

"Yeah, but there's one tiny problem," Rose admitted. "I told security about the bomb before they evacuated the building and that I was going to defuse it. I know it was a bad idea, but they would have seen me on the security cameras when I activated the alarm anyway, and I wanted to cover your tracks. I've got the feeling that by now every Torchwood agent in the entire country will be looking for me, until they're convinced I've died down there."

"Good thing this isn't just a London hopper," the Doctor gave back with another slightly mad grin. "We need something where it'll take them some time to get to." He thought for a moment, then his face lit up. "Let's go to Paris. City of Lights."

Rose raised an eyebrow. "You want to build a void monitor in your flat? With a nosy concierge lurking around?"

"Of course not. I'm a physics professor, you know. Some of us have got laboratories for important experiments," he gave back indignantly.

"And knowing you, I'm fairly certain you've never used it for its intended purpose and I guess it contains lots of unusual stuff no one on this planet has ever seen before."

"Exactly. And because of that nobody will ever notice the _borrowed_ Torchwood equipment." He gave her another brilliant grin and at Romana's nodded approval he set the coordinates for his laboratory at the Sorbonne.


End file.
